When did Herod the Great die?

Question: I have read the article Did Herod the "Great" Really Die In 4 B.C.? which argues that Herod the Great might have died in 4 BC instead of 1 BC.
What is the evidence of this claim? Is this new date widely accepted among modern historians?
Comment: Can you address whether the material provided in [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_the_Great#Death) answers the question? Alternatively, there seems to be extensive discussion in results from google [Example 1](http://www.hermetic.ch/cal_stud/ph01.htm) and [Biblical Archaeology Review](http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/jesus-historical-jesus/herods-death-jesus-birth-and-a-lunar-eclipse/) - the second source is probably spot on for you.
Answer: As John A. Cramer observes,

Trying to date the death of Herod the Great is attended by
considerable uncertainty

The main source for information about the death of Herod the Great is the historian Flavius Josephus, who was writing more than a generation after the death of Herod. Josephus states that Herod's death occurred between by "a fast" and the Passover. He also says that on the night of the fast there was a lunar eclipse.
Now, there were four lunar eclipses that occurred in the likely time frame:

September 15, 5 BC
March 12–13, 4 BC
January 10, 1 BC and
December 29, 1 BC

Unfortunately, none of the dates for these four eclipses fits all the other details of the story perfectly, particularly if the "fast" mentioned by Josephus is taken to be Yom Kippur.
As far as I am aware, most historians still accept the conventional date of 4BC. If the the fast mentioned by Josephus wasn't Yom Kippur, but actually the Fast of Esther, which occurs exactly one month before Passover, then an eclipse on March 12-13 in 4BC actually matches with Josephus details is quite well. This point is made by Suzanne Nadaf in the Queries & Comments of Bible Archaeology Review, Vol 40, issue 3 (May/June 2014).
For those who want to accept the tradition that "the Messiah was born in 3 B.C.", based on the calculations of the 6th-century monk, Dionysius Exiguus, the possibility of Herod's death occurring in 1 BC is clearly very attractive.
The truth is, as John A. Cramer concedes (in the reply to Suzanne Nadaf's post, cited above), there are just too many possibilities and we have too little hard information to determine the precise date. The question will almost certainly remain open forever.

A representative "debate" of the various points of view was conducted over a number of issues in the pages of Bible Archaeology Review between 2013 and 2015. (This is one of the links mentioned by Mark in his earlier comment above.) It is well worth reading, if only to highlight the interpretive difficulties, given the equivocal nature of the evidence - such as it is, and the distances between the positions of the proponents of the different dates.
Comment: @justCal No problem, my bad.
Answer: To prioritize historical view of the bible for a moment rather than a religious view;  It appears the article you're sourcing  Did Herod the "Great" Really Die In 4 B.C.? is trying to mash together isolated events which occur in different Gospels.  As you are probable aware the bible contains many genre of writing not just history.  More pertinent to your question though history in the New Testament Gospels is not the history of object facts.  The Gospels were not written to reveal objective facts but always about spreading the "Good News" of the coming of Jesus.  The underlying truth, if you will.
The reason 4 B.C. is so important as Harod's death is because literalists are trying to balance three dates.

The Birth of Jesus (believed to be around 4 BC) (Matthew and Luke)
The Death of Harod the Great (4 BC), responsible for the infanticide which occurs in the bible upon Jesus's birth. (Matthew)
And the Great Roman Census from the Gospel of Luke, which no other historical records or account exists outside of the gospel of Luke.  Some try to shoe horn the Syrian Census of Quirinius of 6 CE (10 years after 4BC) and try to make the dates fit.

Only they don't fit if Harod the Great died in 4BC.
Three events which don't occur in any single Gospel.  Two events are spoken of only, in two different gospels, but are not spoken of in any other book Jewish, Roman, or Christian literature from antiquity.
How can the bible be right if these dates don't match up?  Even without the controversy of the dates?  If objective history is your metric the bible is wrong.   In the Gospel of Matthew it says, after Jesus's birth Joseph was warned by an angel of the dangers to his family from Harods infanticide eruption, and took his family into Egypt for safety.  In the Gospel of Luke it says, after the birth of Jesus the family stayed in Bethlehem for the purification ritual.  Women who had just given birth were considered impure and had to undergo a 30 day purification ritual.  It further says that after the purification ritual Joseph and his family went north,  not south into Egypt.  So given the bible was written by serious men.  Men who lived in a time of wide spread illiteracy yet where intelligent and learned enough not only to be literate, but to have written entire books. Men who at the very least believed they had a serious message to convey.  How can it be these obvious conflicts found they way into some of the most studied books in history?
Short Answer
Yes King Harod the Great died in 4 BC around the time of Jesus's birth which was also misdated.  No that doesn't mean the Gospels are considered accurate history by most secular scholars.  The facts are that objective history was unknown in ancient times and is a relatively modern invention.  So given that the obvious and understandable conclusion is Gospels were not meant to be read as objective history. Telling stories to reveal the greater meaning or underlying truth the author was trying to convey is a common trait in ancient histories.  Even the relatively modern accounts of George Washington demonstrate this phenomena.  George Washington never actually skipped a rock across the quarter mile wide Potomac River at Mount Vernon.  Never chopped down the cherry tree.  And probable even told the occasional lie.
The story of Jesus's origin in Matthew and Luke, is not supposed to reveal objective facts about Jesus, rather the stories in the Gospels are meant to reveal a truth.  That Jesus is the Messiah, the new King David, and New Moses, as predicted by the messianic prophets.  The stories of Jesus's birth which come from the two Gospels most intent on showing Jesus as the Messiah of the Jews (Matthew) and the Savior of the World(Luke) and only these two gospels, and only in the beginning of these two Gospels and that they disagree on obvious objective facts is evidence enough of this.
Matthew and Luke with regard to Jesus's Birth disagree on:

Why Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem. (unknown Matthew,Census Luke)
The Star which appeared over the manger ( Matthew )
The Manger ( in luke, Jesus was born in a house in Matthew )
Who attended the Birth ( 3 wise men only in Matthew, not in Luke)
Where Joseph and Mary went after Jesus was born (Egypt Matthew, North Luke)
When they left  ( immediately Matthew for fear of Harod, 30 days latter after purification ritual Luke )
Infanticide. (only in Matthew)

To get more incite on why these obvious conflicts in the events were placed in the bible we look at Jesus's birth in Bethlehem which both Luke and Matthew agree on.  The rest of the new testament even most of the Gospels of Luke and Matthew portray Jesus as from Nazareth even calling him the Nazarene.  Further evidence can be found in the Gospel of John as I go into below.  Jesus's birth in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the only two gospels which speak of Jesus's birth, are different because both Matthew and Luke are trying to tell different but related truths.  Truths which are not tied to the objective facts.
Longer Answer
Background
First a short discussion on the New Testament.
The New Testament has 27 separate books written by 14 or 15 Christian Authors.  Almost all written in first century AD and almost all written in Greek(not Hebrew, not Aramaic).  Jesus was born around 4 BC.  Executed around 30AD.   Jesus and his followers all spoke Aramaic not Hebrew or Greek so all of the new testament writings are translations.   In the New Testament The books can be broken into 4 major genres.

The beginning of christianity, 4 gospels four different accounts of Jesus life and times.  Broken up into synoptic and maverick gospels.
The Spread of Christianity Acts, A theologically driven historical account of the spread of christianity from Jerusalem to the capital of the Roman Empire.  Starts just after Jesus's crucifixion.
The Beliefs and Ethics of Christianity The Epistles, 21 letters.
Letters to early geographically isolated church leaders and
individualist different cities about different christian issues in the
early church while still under Roman persecution. Broken up into three groups:

The Epistles of St. Paul (13  but only 7 attributed to St. Paul in the Bible are not disputed)  at least six are disputed as whether they actually came from St. Paul. The 7 undisputed letters are all written by Paul to his various churches he established.
The Dutro or  pseudepigraphic Letters (6) disputed letters.  Some say written by followers of Paul, in Paul's name.
The Catholic or Universal/General Epistles(8 of them)

The Climax of Christianity, Apocalyptic Vision of the End of the World.  The book of Revelations or sometimes called the Apocalypse of John.

The Gospels
The Gospels are broken down into the Synoptic Gospels and the Unique or Maverick Gospel.
Synoptic Gospels - Mark, Matthew and Luke; Synoptic means "seen together", these gospels tell many of the same stories, often in the same order and often using the exact same words.  Verbatim agreements in places.  Most scholars explain Verbatim agreement in the wordings of the synoptic gospels by saying the authors of these gospels copied parts of their gospels from existing gospels. One gospel was the source for the other two.
Synoptic Gospels overlap broadly in:

(Only Matthew and Luke tell a Jesus birth narrative)
Jesus Baptized by John the Baptist.
Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil
Returns and starts proclaiming the coming of the kingdom of God
Teaches the crowds in Parables.
Performs miracles including casting out deamons.
Goes up on a mountain (Mount Transfiguration), and is transfigured
Predicts he needs to go to Jerusalem to be betrayed, denied, tried and executed.
Then goes to Jerusalem
Then turns over the tables at the high temple and is turned over to the - Romans by the priests of the high temple
Condemned by Punches Pilot, and is Crucified and Died on the Cross.
On the third day rises from the dead ( only Matthew, and Luke)

Unique or Maverick Gospel -  Gospel of John, Doesn't have most of the same stories.  No account of Jesus's Birth, or Baptism, no account of going to the wilderness,  Jesus never tells a parable, never casts out a daemon.  Does not go onto the mountain of Transformation in the Gospel of John.  Does not tell of the last supper.  Jesus does not stand trial before the Jewish sanhedron in the Gospel of John.  Different set of stories, different set of Miracles.  Many dialogs between Jesus and others. (Nicodemus(ch 3), and Samaritan Woman (ch 4) only occur in John).
Synopsis of each Gospel
Gospel of Mark:  Shortest and probable first gospel.  Jesus shows up in this Gospel as an adult.  Focuses on Jesus's ministries.  Baptized by John, comes back from "wilderness" proclaiming kingdom of God, and begins his ministry.  Performs spectacular miracles.  Raises Jabirus's 12 year old daughter from the dead (mark 5).  Jesus swears all the beneficiaries of his miracles to secrecy, even commands demons he casts out to silence.  Theme, nobody understands who Jesus is except ( God, Jesus knows because God tells him,  Demons know because when cast out they proclaim it.  The people Jesus's healed know but Jesus swears them to secrecy.)  Even Jesus's disciples are ignorant of who Jesus is. Half way through the Gospel of Mark when Peter proclaims Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus says he has to go to Jerusalem to be betrayed and crucified,  Peter says not you lord?..  Demonstrating even Peter didn't really understand who Jesus was. The reader of the Gospel of Mark knows because the Gospel of mark says so,  no one else in the Gospel of Mark knows.  Then comes the Passion,  as Jesus dies on the cross proclaiming he has been forsaken,  the curtain in the Temple on the Mount rips in half.  The barrier between where god dwell and everywhere else is destroyed.  Lesson,  Through the death of Jesus god now has direct access to the people.  Then Jesus is recognized by the centurion who just crucified him. "Truly this man was the son of God"!!  The only human being who understands Jesus (suffering son of God) in the Gospel of Mark is the pagan who crucified him.   Mark is also silent on Jesus's resurection.
Gospel of Matthew is said to have been written later than the Gospel of Mark, with mark being used as a template.  The Gospel of Matthew is both the most Jewish and most anti Jewish gospel.  Matthew again portrays Jesus as the son of God,  but Matthew also goes out of his way to portray Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.  Sent from the Jewish God to the Jewish People in fulfillment of the scriptures. Matthew begins with a Genealogy.  16 verses.  Traces Jesus's ancestry through his father Joseph to the line of King David, and Abraham (father of the Jews).  Emphasis is Jesus came in fulfillment of the Jewish law.  Birth narrative is given in order to fulfill what was spoken of by the prophets.   Jesus tells his followers that he wasn't sent to abolish the law but to fulfill the law of Abraham.  Jesus says anyone who follows him must keep the law. (keep the law even better than the scribes and Pharisees!)  Huge contrast with what the Apostle Paul says.  Theme, Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.
Gospel of Luke is written around the time the Gospel of Matthew was written and is also believed to have used Mark as a template.  It is also continued by the Book of Acts..  It like Matthew shows Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.  Then Luke goes farther.  Luke says Jesus came for the salvation of not just the Jews but the whole world.  Luke too contains a Genealogy.  To demonstrate Luke's theme, unlike Matthew which traces Jesus's lineage back to King David and Abraham, Luke's Genealogy traces Jesus back to Adam and Eve.  Back to the common root of all humans.   Jesus is portrayed as a Jewish prophet who is rejected by the Jewish people.  Jesus goes home to Nazareth and proclaims his teachings, and the town people drag him off into the desert and try to throw him off a cliff.  This occurs over and over again in this gospel.    Jesus proclaims speaks out publicly and is rejected.  In Acts, the continuation of the Book of Luke, not only is Jesus rejected but Christianity (Jesus's followers) are rejected.  Because they were rejected,  they take their message to the gentiles.   Luke and Acts taken together tell how Jesus's message was taken and given to the gentiles (non Jews).   Jesus as a prophet knows exactly what is going to happen to him in the end and unlike in Mark, is not portrayed as anxious or nervous in the face of death.  Luke's theme is Jesus was a Jewish Prophet who was sent and rejected by the Jews and was then tasked with spreading his message to the entire world.
Gospel of John is unique among our four Gospels.  Mark Matthew and Luke often tell some of the same stories and often in the same sequence, sometimes even using the same words.  John is different.  John doesn't contain the same stories until you get to the passion narratives.  The passion stories are similar but told in a different ways.  In Matthew Mark and Luke Jesus never proclaims his own divine identity.  In Mark, Matthew and Luke others proclaim the divinity of Jesus and Jesus always demures or silences them in some way.  In the Gospel of John Jesus several times proclaims his own divinity.  The Gospel of John Begins by saying

"In the beginning there was the word,  and the word was with God, and the word was God.  This word became flesh and it dwelt among us and we have beheld his glory.  Glory only begotten from the father."

The divine word is Jesus.   In the Gospel of John Jesus says, "I and the Father are one"!!  "before Abraham was, I am."  "I am" is the name of God in Exodus(chapter 3).  Unlike other Gospels, In John Jesus also performs miracles to prove who he is and what he's saying is true. Where as in the other Gospels he performs miracles almost because he can, and not to prove who he is.  In the other gospels he constantly silences people who proclaim him as Messiah.  In John it is all out in the open...

"I am the resurrection and the life", and Jesus raises Lazureth from the dead to demonstrate this.
"I am the bread of Life", and feeds the masses with a few loaves of bread.
"I am the light of the world", and gives site to the blind.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus is the divine being who comes from heaven who proves himself to be what he says by doing divine acts.  By the end of John even doubting Thomas proclaims Jesus as the son of god.  Jesus's miracles are portrayed very differently in Matthew Mark and Luke.
 Answer
The Gospels while having broad similarities also have vast differences.
What they are uniquely trying to convey is found in these differences.  The Gospels are narratives which each have a specific point. Generally they all proclaim the "Good News", the literal meaning of the word gospel.   However they can be interpreted based upon the different Christian Truth each uniquely teaches rather than as literal histories or objective truth.  They are all basically narratives written to persuade the reader to believe in Jesus and prove different aspects of Jesus's sacrifice.
Specially Jesus's origin story which your question regards, are believed to have been written to prove Jesus as Messiah and thus link him to other Messiah's (Abraham, King David, and Moses) for the benefit of the skeptical, than to be an actual verbatim retelling of events.
Only two of the four gospels cover Jesus's birth. (Matthew and Luke).   Only these two Gospels claim he was born in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth where the rest of the bible, even Matthew and Luke says was his origin.  In fact Bethlehem only appears in one other place in the entire new Testament.  John (7.41-42).  That passage in John has the clue to why Bethlehem and Jesus's birth were so important.
Setting the scene.
In the Gospel of John(7.41-42) It is early in Jesus's ministry.  Jesus has only taught in Galilee in and among his family, friends and neighbors.  His family is going to Jerusalem to take part in an annual festival to celebrate a plentiful harvest and they entreat Jesus to come with them.  Jesus is wary saying it is not my time. Jesus at first refuses to accompany them, but then after they have left secretly goes.  Once at Jerusalem the Gospel of John says, when he teaches the crowd they is split on who he is and what his meaning is.  When Jesus tries to say who he is the crowd responds.

John 7.27-28:
  But we know where this man is from; when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from."... Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, "Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from.

.
The Crowd knows him and they know where Jesus is from, Jesus's entire family is there, and the inference is he is from Nazareth, in Galilee not from Bethlehem.

John 7.41-43:
  "How can the Messiah come from Galilee? 42 Does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David's descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?" 43 Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. 44 Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him.

.

John 7.52:
  (Pharisees speaking to a soldier who was sent to arrest Jesus.  The soldier though was impressed with Jesus and did not arrest him, but returned to tell the Pharisees what he saw. )They replied, "Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee."

So John tells us the Jews did not believe that Messiahs came from Galilee.
The Gospel of Luke thus places Jesus Birth in Bethlehem and directly ties Joseph to the house of David.  Luke does so with a Roman Census, where the entire Roman world is getting registered for taxes.  Only nowhere other than the Gospel of Luke is this census documented which covers all of Rome.  ( There was a census in Syria, 10 years after the death of Harod the Great in the year 6CE when Judea officially became a Roman Province, The Syrian Governor Quirinius called for a census in his province.  Upon his death, Harod the Great's kingdom was broken into four provinces and Quirinius only ruled one.  His census did not effect Galilee where Jesus's family was from, nor Bethlehem where they travelled too according to Luke.  Also since the entire reason for the census was taxes it did not require people to travel to the homes of their distant ancestors, or even the places of their own births as portrayed in the Gospel of Luke, Rather Quirinius's Census taxed them, their possessions where they were currently living.
Luke's suggestion that the entire Roman empire was periodically placed on hold as every Roman subject was forced to uproot himself and travel great distances to the homes of their birth, and wait there for months until a Roman official could take stock of their possessions.  Possessions they would have been forced to leave in their place of residence;  doesn't seem very reasonable..
What is interesting about this is not only would Luke writing about a generation (25-30 years) after Jesus know his story was factually false, but also his immediate audience all living under Roman Rule would also recognize Luke's account was factually inaccurate.  This is a hard topic to grasp but modern scholars do not believe Luke meant for his story of Jesus's birth to be understood as historical objective fact.  Luke would have had no idea what we in the modern world even meant by history.  The entire concept of history as objective fact was foreign to a person in the time of the Gospel of Luke was written.  To the Gospel writers history was not about covering facts, but uncovering truths.  People in the ancient world did not make a sharp distinction from stories of myth and reality.  The two were tied together.  That is to say they were less interested in what actually happened than what it meant.  It would have been perfectly normal for an author in the ancient world to tell stories of gods and heroes which the audience recognized were technically inaccurate.   Hence Matthews stories of King Harod's infanticide which forced Joseph, Mary and young Jesus into Egypt.  Like the census in Luke, Harod's infanticide is not written about in any book(Jewish Christian or Roman), not even in any other Gospel or New Testament book outside of the Gospel of Matthew.  Which is an amazing fact given we have many chronicles of King Harod the great which come down to us through Roman texts.  King Harod, who was after all the most famous Jew in the Roman Empire up to that point.  As Lukes Census, Matthews infanticide was not meant to be read as what we would call history.
Matthew needs Jesus to come out of Egypt for the same reason Luke needs him to be born in Bethlehem.  If fulfills the words of the messianic prophecies, and answers the peasants in the Gospel of John.  Jesus was born in Bethlehem as was King David.  Jesus crossed the Sinai from Egypt as Moses did.
Matthew has Jesus coming out of Egypt because the Prophet Hosea said the Messiah would come out of Egypt like Mosses did.

Book of Hosea Ch 11.1
  When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.

Luke has Jesus being born in Bethlehem because the Prophet Micah said the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem as King David was.

Micah 5:2
  "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans[a] of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel,

The Stories are not supposed to reveal facts about Jesus, rather the stories in the Gospels are meant to reveal a truth.  That Jesus is the Messiah, the new King David, and New Moses, as predicted by the messianic prophets.  The stories coming from the two Gospels most intent on showing Jesus as the Messiah of the Jews (Matthew) and the savior of the World(Luke) and only these two Gospels demonstrates this..
Comment: +1 for an excellent answer!
Answer: Perhaps the best way to answer this particular question is by rephrasing it in the following manner :

How did Dionysius Exiguus determine the Christian Anno Domini era in the first place ?

The answer is quite simple : By counting back 15 x 19 = 285 years from the very first spring equinox of the Diocletian Era or Era of Martyrs, since, by his time, the date of March 25th as the date of Christ's conception1 had already become well-established throughout medieval Christendom.
Since this epoch is relatively compatible with the few biographical details glimpsed in the Christian Gospels2, it went on to become the prevalent chronological convention in the West for dating years, especially after its adoption and popularization by Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in the early eighth century.

1 His focus on the Feast of the Annunciation is due to its close liturgical proximity to that of the Resurrection (both being spring festivals), since the main purpose of his work consisted in establishing the date for celebrating Easter.
2 Such as the crucifixion under Pontius Pilate (AD 26 - 36), following a religious activity which began in the fifteenth year of Tiberius (Luke 3:1), at the age of thirty (Luke 3:23), and spanned over three consecutive Passovers (i : John 2:13-23, ii : John 6:4, iii : John 11:55-19:14).
Answer: I've been researching and studying this topic for almost thirty years at this point.
Relative to extensive and exhaustive research, I can tell you with absolute confidence that Herod did not die in 4 BCE. Nor did he die in 1 BCE. The evidence we have defies both hypotheses.
Herod's death, from my view, is a great irony. We actually have all the information we need to date his death accurately and credibly.
Josephus dates his reign from two separate points. He was named king by the Romans in 40 BCE, and he captured Jerusalem in 37 BCE. From these two points, he reigned thirty-seven and thirty-four years respectively.
The Jews counted the reigns of kings in a non-ascension format, and credited a king a full year of reign each year on the 1st of Nisan. The partial year at the beginning would be considered a full year on the 1st of Nisan. The final year that did not reach the 1st of Nisan was not credited as a year of reign.
With his first years being 40 BCE and 37 BCE, each being credited as one year of reign as of the 1st of Nisan in 39 BCE and 36 BCE respectively, he would have completed and been credited with thirty-seven and thirty-four years of reign as of the 1st of Nisan in 3BCE.
We also know that his son returned from Rome prior to the Day of Atonement, and was tried immediately upon his return. We know it was prior to the Day of Atonement because of the priest Matthias, who was removed from the high priesthood after the golden eagle incident, and who had been replaced for a single day for the Day of Atonement.
The timespan we are working with from this point boils down to travel time. Herod put his son on trial, as I said, immediately upon his return. This was before the Day of Atonement. He dispatched messengers to Caesar to ask permission to put his son to death. Herod died five days after receiving a response.
The travel time to Rome is between thirty and forty days each way. That makes the round trip approximately three months, which puts Herod's death around the middle of December.
The Megallit Ta'anit records the date Kislev 7 as being the date of Herod's death. Not coincidentally, this falls in mid December that year.
I'm at work, so I don't have my notes in front of me to give a to-the-day date, but suffice it to say, the existing evidence plainly demonstrates that Herod died in mid December of 3 BCE.
The irony I mentioned lies in the alleged lunar eclipse. Fact is, the evidence for when Herod died, right down to the specific day, is plain as day. But there are no lunar eclipses anywhere near that time period. So all that information is scrapped in order to force his death into some other time frame that defies the evidence, just so it can be made to coincide with a lunar eclipse.
I have a valid answer for the eclipse, but I'm holding on to that piece of information for now. I'd hate to have my discoveries hit the internet ahead of my book. But rest assured that there is an answer.
A 1 BCE death is impossible, just to throw that out there. It only works if you alter the starting point for counting his reign, whereas the existing evidence is abundantly clear as to when the count begins.
4 BCE is equally impossible. By the 4 BCE hypothesis, there is only a 15-20 day window between Herod's death and Varus' arrival, assuming Herod died on the 1st of Nisan rather than later, and that Ptolemy rode out right away to fetch Varus. Meanwhile, the time necessary for Ptolemy to ride to Antioch, for Varus to recall troops from their winter quarters, and for Varus to march all the way to Caesarea is well more than thirty days.
Do the research. The eclipse is the problem, not the information on Herod.
Comment: We generally prefer answers that include source references.
Comment: Josephus, the Megallit Ta'anit, and the Babylonian Talmud are the sources. I'm not at home where the specific references are readily at hand.

When did Herod the Great die?


How is Allah worthy of worship?

Question: I'm worshiping Allah and praying 5 times a day and I know the Attributes of Allah but just to know and ** to have a better faith, how is Allah worthy of worship?**
I know that Allah is the most merciful and the best giver but I want to know more about why Allah is the only worthy of worship.
(The answers won't impact my worship, I will still be praying if He wants)
Answer: Why is Allah worthy of worship?

For being among the religion of Islam out of the 10,000 (false) religions in the world.
For blessing you with caring Muslim parents
For blessing you with good health
For blessing you with the ability to learn, have a good education
For blessing you with a house so you may seek safety, warmth, and protection in
For blessing you with children (if you're married and a father/mother)
For blessing you with siblings (if you have siblings)
For letting you have food and water on the table
For letting you have money to buy goods with
For having a chance at life
For being a guided Muslim on the path of Islam

I can keep going but I believe you get the point.

"And He gave you of all what you asked of Him. And if you count the Favor of Allah, you will you be able to count them. Indeed, mankind is surely unjust and ungrateful."
-Abraham 14:34

So you see, Allah has given us so many blessings, the least we can do is thank Him for these blessings and not coming off as arrogant and/or ungrateful.
God does not need human worship. He didn't make humans out of a desire to pursue His glory. It would not lessen God's glory if no single person worshiped Him. God is self-sufficient. Humans, on the other hand, were born with needs and desires. As a result, it is humanity who deserves to worship God. Human beings must follow God's divinely revealed rules in order to honor and glorify him. God's obedience is the secret to happiness in this world and in the afterlife. The most logical and rational thing to do in life is to believe in and obey God.

How is Allah worthy of worship?


What exactly would you be doing / would you have been doing in the new job?

Question: I don´t understand the difference between both sentences. What can I ask my friend about her new job?
Answer: The form what would you have been doing strongly implies that it will not happen - that you have not got the job, or have no hope of getting the job (it is an irrealis, or counter-factual form).
With what would you be doing, the question of whether you will get the job is left open: you may or may not get it.
(The third form, which you didn't ask about, is what will you be doing, which implies that you definitely have the job.)


Zeus throwing errors when running RSpec

Question: I'm running in to a situation which seems to happen to many users of Zeus and RSpec.
Let's say I have the following spec:
# spec/views/messages/show.html.erb

require 'spec_helper'

describe "messages/show.html.erb" do
  it "displays the text attribute of the message" do
    render
    rendered.should contain("Hello world!")
  end
end

and the following view template that it tests.
# app/views/messages/show.html.erb

Hello world!

My pwd is the root of the rails app. When I run rspec I get the following response:
user@host $ rspec
.

Finished in 0.06264 seconds
1 example, 0 failures

Randomized with seed 9609

Everything looks good. If, however, I run the test with zeus rspec spec (zeus rspec doesn't work at all) I get the following output.
user@host $ zeus rspec spec
.

Finished in 0.07292 seconds
1 example, 0 failures

Randomized with seed 0

F

Failures:

  1) messages/show.html.erb displays the text attribute of the message
     Failure/Error: render
     NameError:
       undefined local variable or method `render' for <RSpec::Core::ExampleGroup::Nested_2:0x936a0fc>
     # ./spec/views/show.html.erb_spec.rb:5:in `block (2 levels) in <top (required)>'
     # -e:1:in `'

Finished in 0.00041 seconds
1 example, 1 failure

Failed examples:

rspec ./spec/views/show.html.erb_spec.rb:4 # messages/show.html.erb displays the text attribute of the message

I have seen several questions similar to this on SO, such as these:
Zeus fails when testing with Rspec
zeus rspec fails include required files, but rspec alone does fine
Zeus + FactoryGirl::Syntax::Methods. undefined method `create'
The common thread is that the solution suggests commenting out / deleting the following lines from spec_helper.rb if they exist.
require 'rspec/autorun'
require 'rspec/autotest'

My problem is that those lines don't appear in my spec_helper.rb file or anywhere else in the application.
After some digging I found the offending line was actually in the rspec executable script in the RSpec gem.
I am currently using RSpec version 2.13.1 and the content of the file is as follows:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby

begin
  require 'rspec/autorun'
rescue LoadError
  $stderr.puts <<-EOS
#{'*'*50}
  Could not find 'rspec/autorun'

  This may happen if you're using rubygems as your package manager, but it is not
  being required through some mechanism before executing the rspec command.

  You may need to do one of the following in your shell:

    # for bash/zsh
    export RUBYOPT=rubygems

    # for csh, etc.
    set RUBYOPT=rubygems

  For background, please see http://gist.github.com/54177.
#{'*'*50}
  EOS
  exit(1)
end

It appears from the RSpec documentation that it is a convenience method that will run your tests for you. Strangely enough, when I comment out the require 'rspec/autorun' section of the begin/rescue zeus still has the same behavior (throwing the error), but rspec no longer functions in the traditional fashion (just running the rspec command). As per this documentation (https://www.relishapp.com/rspec/rspec-core/docs/command-line) you can still run it, just in that slightly more verbose fashion.
In any case, this hints to me that either zeus is either relying on a file other than the rspec exec script or the problem isn't quite as clearly related to just the spec_helper.rb require statements (which rspec 2.13.1 doesn't add to the config).
Has anyone run in to this situation or come down this same path??
I'm hesitant to throw up a an issue on either the rspec-rails / rspec-core or zeus repos as I'm not at all sure which library is causing problems for which.
Any help at all would be extremely appreciated.
Comment: I had a similar issue, where running a certain helper spec would fail only under zeus, and only when running that one spec file (not all helper specs). The error was that the helper couldn't find a method that was defined in ApplicationHelper. I finally punted and added a "require 'application_helper'" to the top of the helper spec, which seems to have fixed it. Had the same issue with spork as well as zeus, so I don't believe it's zeus specific.
Answer: According to this you should follow specs files naming convention when doing view specs. Try to rename:
spec/views/messages/show.html.erb

to
spec/views/messages/show.html.erb_spec.rb

and it might help.

Zeus throwing errors when running RSpec


LED Recessed lighting trim stuck

Question: I feel like an idiot.  I just bought my first starter home which happens to be a renovated home.  The seller told me I have LED recessed lighting but I would like to change those lights to less harsh white light.  I tried to remove the trim to change the light but it seems that its stuck on the ceiling.  I cannot twist or wiggle the trim or anything.  Was the trim caulked to the ceiling ?  Please advise, I am scared to cause a mess on my ceiling.
Answer: In almost every case, recessed lighting trim is held in place by springs on two sides of the unit. If you can get purchase on the edges, pull down on opposite sides. The unit should lower by several inches.
If you cannot get a grip, you could pry first one side, then the other with a thin plastic putty knife or a plastic spatula. Once you can grip it, again pull down a few inches.
You can then usually release the springs holding the unit to the ceiling. Be careful, because on many LED units, the trim and lighting portions are integral, and they may have wiring going up into the fixture that may need to be disconnected.
Answer: I recently had to deal with this for a particularly difficult pot light. The fixture would only pull down from the ceiling by about 1/4 inch because the two wire clips holding it in place were placed into a groove inside the "can". The wire clips are sharp, very strong, and just pretty nasty to get to. Here was my solution:

First When first installing the pot light, it is temping to put the wire clips into the grooves inside the can - it even appears logical to do so. Don't do it! Slide the clips up anywhere else in the can - they will hold fine.
If you didn't do 1 above, try the following, which worked for me:

first, I was able to push the light bulb upward, further into the ceiling. Be careful if there is also a glass cover.
I then was able to push the inside ring which holds the bulb, further up into ceiling. Possibly you can pop up both the ring and the bulb at once but I didn't try this.
I then was able to work from above the metal clips. I located one of the two metal clips. I needed to get to the back of the clip, where it was stuck in the groove of the can. I was able to work a quarter (ie, a 25 cent piece) down between the metal clip and the edge of the can. This pushed in the clip just enough to disengage it from the groove in the can, and the fixture came down easily from the ceiling on that side. From there you are home free!
remember when putting the fixture back in place, don't slide the metal clips into the grooves of the can, or you will be back to square one the next time you need to replace your bulb!

LED Recessed lighting trim stuck


Indifferentiability of Sponge Construction

Question: In the case of sponge construction, it is shown to be differentiable from a RO. In the paper by Bertoni et al., what is meant by the node being saturated. How does it become saturated and the condition which leads to error in the simulator was not clear.
Paper link: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=09F733C00E75E6BB3E3537ACFAE4396E?doi=10.1.1.544.7974&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Answer: Saturation is defined in section 4.1 as the condition $R \cup O = C$, where $O$ is the set of supernodes with outgoing edges and $R$ is the set of rooted supernodes and $C$ is the equivalence class of all the nodes with equal "C" part.
The idea is that any query to the compression oracle will reveal a single path in the graph only when the starting node is rooted. If the starting node is not rooted, a random path is chosen but not revealed to the adversary.
To accomplish that, we avoid rooted supernodes with outgoing edges; otherwise, this reveals more paths to the adversary. Therefore, the simulator cannot use this trick once the graph is saturated, i.e. $O = C$, and the replies will not be consistent anymore.
The theorem is that saturation only happens after $2^c$ queries, where $c$ is the capacity.


What do Online and Offline mean in Viber?

Question: If my bf's viber shows he's online and then in the middle of the night it changes to offline, what does this mean? Does it mean that when he's at home and within reach of the internet it shows him to be online if his Viber app is active? And does it mean that he has gone out of range of the internet if his Viber states he's offline? (He has a Samsung Galaxy Fame.)
Answer: "Online" means that Viber is running in the foreground or background (the user is available for calls or messages). When the phone has no internet connection, or the user manually used the "Exit" option inside Viber, this changes their status to "Last online at..."
In some cases, depending on the mobile kernel and software, the user uses something like Power Saving Mode, so after the idle time, the Wifi is turned off or some background application is turn off ... so Viber is turned off, your bf's viber state is also offline.


How to fix a toilet that no longer swooshes when it is finished flushing?

Question: We recently had our bathtub removed and a full shower installed.  A city plumbing inspector did some work downstairs and since then whenever we flush our toilet it sounds as though it is flushing right except there is no longer a swooshing sound at the end of the flush and there are remnants of toilet paper left behind. Any easy possible solutions would be appreciated, as we would rather not have to get the city plumbing department involved again.  Thank You.
Comment: What is the water level like, in the tank?  Is something clogging it's evacuation?
Answer: Definitely, snake the toilet to confirm he didn't flush something bad or leave his rag in that was used to plug sewer gases out until his work was done. Some guys shove their rag in & out of sight to then forget about it.
Depending on the setup the shower could have cleared the rag from the shower & right into the toilet elbow. If you do hit something mushy with the toilet snake immediately or in a couple or few feet, then it's likely his rag. If it's not in the toilet itself, then the toilet has to be removed in order to retrieve it...So it doesn't get caught somewhere else where it can't be removed easily.
If you aren't comfortable with that &/or don't have a new toilet seal on hand, then absolutely get him back ASAP to fix whatever he did.
Answer: There are multiple possible causes for a toilet that is not flushing completely:

the water level in the tank is not high enough (common)

remove the tank lid and inspect,the recommended water level is often marked on the inside of tank, either on the tank wall or on the overflow tube. Adjust your fill valve (ballcock valve) to attain the proper water level.

the flush valve (the thing that raises to allow water to flow out of the tank and into the bowl. This is sometimes a flapper thing, sometimes a ball on wires/chain, sometimes a peculiar proprietary mechanism) is maladjusted/worn/damaged (common)

remove the tank lid and inspect the flush valve for damage and ensure it is connected and aligned properly. Observe it's behavior whilst flushing, it should not drop down to the closed position until a significant amount of the tank water has drained to the bowl. Try manually holding it up to see if the flush improves, if it does this is an indication it is closing too early.

there is a partial obstruction in the toilet trap (common)

if neither of the above apply, one would suspect a partial obstruction. You would then need to aquire a toilet auger and use it to clear the toilet trap.

a partial obstruction in the drain line downstream of the toilet trap (less common)

this is not common as the pipe downstream of the toilet are typically large (3"-4" diameter). This could require removal of the toilet and snake/rod by professional or well equipped DIY'er.
Comment: I had a problem where the fill tube was not properly connected (and aimed into) the overflow tube. This caused flushing problems.


How to test different tools to be able to compare them?

Question: I've been looking into software testing since we want to test and compare several tools (tools = software programs) made for the same goal, eg. all html editors.
Although the tools we have now are open source, we are not interested in the code.
So that made me look at black-box/functional testing, but that's described as using the programs specification to create your test cases. What we wanted to do though is to use a more general test case for all the tools. That test case would fit the general specification of the domain these tools are build for, but not explicitly for any one of them.
Would that still be called black-box/functional testing or is there a different approach used for this?
And are there other recommendations for this type of 'test and compare' situation?
EDIT: after further reading, I think what I am looking for are System or Acceptance Testing techniques. But still, any other recommendation or correction is welcome.
Comment: What is the purpose of this ? Are you trying to decide which one your team/org should use ?
Comment: I have to agree with Phil here. Could you elaborate on the business problem you're trying to solve? That will help tremendously in determining how to approach the problem.
Answer: As with most other tests, let your Requirements drive your testing, without being tool-specific.
Do you have Requirements for what your tool-under-test must do? If so use that. Don't let the specifics of how the tool fulfills the Requirement become part of your test cases.
For example, if your tool must be able to open an existing HTML file, then don't include the keystrokes used within your test case. Just refer to the fact that you Open the file.


Is there Scala aware high level byte-code manipulation tool like Javassist?

Question: I am looking for a high level bytecode manipulation tool like Javassist, but that understands some of Scala peculiarities. Lower level bytecode manipulation tools should be relatively agnostic, but for my use cases something at the level of Javassist is much better. However a tool at that level  needs to know about the source language and its bytecode mapping. Does something like this exist for Scala?
So far I have been able to use Javassist with Scala for very simple things, but I have been bitten by some Scala/Java differences for a couple of other things.
Comment: Which tasks are you trying to do?
Comment: One problem I ran into is described [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17385725/how-to-add-a-serialversionuid-to-a-class-instance-in-scala) and [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17384913/can-scala-2-10-reflection-emulate-this-javassist-functionality)
Answer: I don't think that such a tool exists (yet). The current situation is, that you cannot mix compilation units compiled with different versions of Scala, i.e. a class compiled with Scala 2.9 will not interoperate with a class compiled with Scala 2.10.
When you use Scala 2.10, you can use Scala reflection and Scala macros to reach similar goals as with bytecode modification. For me this looks like the most future proof way.
One of your questions aimed at adding a serial version ID. This should definitely be possible with Scala macros. With Scala macros it shoudl even be possible to manage the serial version ids in an external database according to API changes.


Why does electrostatic energy not obey superposition principle? What does the extra energy term account for?

Question: Energy stored in an electrostatic field is given by $\frac{\epsilon_0}{2}\int\text{E}^2\text{d}\tau$ where the integration is over all space.If $\vec{\text{E}_0}=\vec{\text{E}_1}+\vec{\text{E}_2}$ and find the energy stored in $\vec{\text{E}_0}$ then, we get this energy term $\frac{\epsilon_0}{2}\int2\vec{\text{E}_1}.\vec{\text{E}_2}\text d\tau$ in addition to the energy terms of the individual fields. Lets call this energy $U.$ What does $U$ account for? Does it account for the energy associated with the establishment of the electrostatic field $\vec{\text{E}_0}$ using the individual fields? If this is correct then, while establishing the field, what causes $U$ to be subtracted when the two individual fields are in opposite direction as $\vec{\text{E}_1}.\vec{\text{E}_2}=-\text{E}_1\text{E}_2$ while it is to be added when they are in the same direction? If I am wrong then what does it account for?One may tell that the work done in bringing a test charge from infinity to a point in the field against the field will be less in the first case hence lesser energy stored than the latter case where the two fields add up in the same direction and hence create a stronger field. But I can't understand how $U$ amount of extra energy is stored when the latter configuration is established but not in the first case? It seems $U$ amount of energy is released while establishing the field in the first case.
Answer: The expression for the total potential energy stored in the fields is given by
$$ \frac{\epsilon_0}{2} \int \left| \mathbf{E}_1 + \mathbf{E}_2 \right|^2 d\tau = \frac{\epsilon_0}{2}\left( \int \left| \mathbf{E}_1 \right|^2 d\tau + \int \left| \mathbf{E}_2 \right|^2 d\tau + 2 \int \mathbf{E}_1 \cdot \mathbf{E}_2 d\tau \right) $$
Notice that the first and second terms of the right-hand side are the potential energies stored in, respectively, the first field (produced independently by some charge configuration $\rho_1$) and the second field (produced independently by some charge configuration $\rho_2$). However, when the two fields are superimposed on one another, there is an interference between them. The third term accounts for the interference, which may be constructive to the total energy ($\mathbf{E}_1$ is in the same direction as $\mathbf{E}_2$, so they constructively add which results in a higher net field and therefore a higher energy) or destructive to the total energy ($\mathbf{E}_1$ is in the opposite direction as $\mathbf{E}_2$, so they destructively interfere which results in a lower net field and therefore a lower energy). Notice also that if $\mathbf{E}_1 \cdot \mathbf{E}_2 = 0$, then $\mathbf{E}_1$ and $\mathbf{E}_2$ are orthogonal to one another, so their superposition results in no interference (one could be oriented along $\hat{x}$ and the other along $\hat{y}$). In this very special case, the energy happens to obey a superposition principle.
Comment: If we integrate over all space there should always be an increase in energy by $U$ amount for all cases right? because if somewhere destructive is taking place then in some other place constructive is taking place in order to conserve energy and $U$ amount of energy is stored which was work done to establish the system.
Answer: It's a bit unfortunate that you called it $J$ because energy is stored in electromagnetic fields and so it moves around but sometimes the net flow of electromagnetic field energy into a region is not completely balanced by an increase in the field energy at that point and one time that happens is when the fields exchange energy with electric charges.  And the rate that happens is $\vec J \cdot \vec E.$
Because that is the rate that work is done on the charges. Then, since $\vec \nabla  \times \vec B =\mu_0\vec J+\mu_0\epsilon_0\frac{\partial \vec E}{\partial t},$ so then we get $\vec J \cdot \vec E=$ $$\left(\frac{1}{\mu_0}\vec \nabla  \times \vec B -\epsilon_0\frac{\partial \vec E}{\partial t}\right)\cdot \vec E.$$
Which equals $$\frac{1}{\mu_0}\vec E \cdot (\vec \nabla  \times \vec B) - \epsilon_0\vec E \cdot \frac{\partial \vec E}{\partial t}.$$
Which also equals $$\frac{1}{\mu_0}\vec E \cdot (\vec \nabla  \times \vec B ) -\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\left(\frac{\epsilon_0}{2}\vec E \cdot \vec E\right).$$
So when charges gain or lose energy from work being done on them, the fields lose or gain energy at an equal rate. So if the current and the electric field point in the same direction the charges gain energy and the fields lose it hence $ -\frac{\partial}{\partial t}\left(\frac{\epsilon_0}{2}\vec E \cdot \vec E\right)$ is energy created right there.
If instead the current pointed in the opposite direction as the field then the charges lose energy and hence the fields gain it.
So really the energy came from the charges. For instance if you have two like charges then they have their own energy but then when you bring them closer together the fields have more energy but that is because you had to push them to bring them together.
You can imagine a situation where two charges are rushing towards each other. They start out with kinetic energy. Work is done by the fields and they slow down. That energy had to go somewhere. The energy goes into the fields right then and there at the exact location of the charge as work is done on it.


FME explode cells

Question: I want to ask if anyone knows how to explode a DGNV8 cell in FME workbench so that it is exported out as a single point to a mdb.I have read a little documentation and it seems I need to set the explode cells parameter to yes, the only problem is that I can't find this setting anywhere. I have tried to find the explode cell setting in fme workbench parameters, but have only come across "Expand named cells" and "Preserve Named Cell insert point" which does not give me the desired output.
Answer: Setting Expand Named Cells to Yes (and Preserve Named Cell Insert Point to No) should give you the results you need.
If not, then try adding a Visualizer/Inspector transformer mid-workspace to check that the cells are being exploded as expected. If they are, then any remaining problem must be in writing the data (maybe the output feature type (table) is set to allow point geometry only?)

FME explode cells


Notepad++ and sFTP Support

Question: Anyone knows of a sFTP plugin for Notepad++ ? I just checked FTP_syncrhonize and it doesnt support sFTP. (please no "use filezilla/winscp/putty" answers).
Answer: Do have a look at NppFTP

Plugin for Notepad++ allowing FTP,
  FTPS, FTPES and SFTP communications.
Comment: Wow. This is huge! Why doesn't this answer and question have 500 votes! I mean I love ssh-ing in and using Emacs, but Notepad++ and sftp is sweet!
Comment: Have problem with private key authentication, although my key works in `winscp`. Key agent does not work either. The plugin seems to be a bit outdated.
Comment: For those who need some help configuring it (or are simply as lazy as me! :-D), I've found this guide good: https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/how-to-connect-to-ftp-with-notepad/

Notepad++ and sFTP Support


1. Adding printer share to file server 2. AD Account lock after changing password. WHY?

Question: I have a mindbender that I am looking for help to solve.
After changing my AD password my account keeps getting lock.
I found the workstation that was sending the wrong password and locking me.
The way I fixed the problem is by removing a shared printer I had just added 1 week ago.
What I want to know is what am i doing wrong when adding the new printer to the fileserver that locks my account? My fileserver is a Windows Server 2008 R2.
EDIT.
Just to clarify a few things. Here is the step of how i get locked.

add shared printer to fileserver
add user who i want to be able to use the printer under object security.
the user connect to the printer by browsing to the fileserver address and clicking on the printer(At no point i enter my credential on that computer)
user use the printer, everything is fine.
I change my password, Then i start getting lock.
I find out which computer is locking me, the user who connected to the printer i shared.
I Go to that computer and remove the shared printer.
I stop getting locked.

What do i need to do to be able to share a printer on the file server without being locked?
Answer: Cached credentials will cause Windows to try and contact the print server with your old password, which of course fails and eventually locks out your account.
To fix, simply log off and back on the affected machine with your new password. You can even lock/unlock the screen to get a similar effect.
Comment: Cached credential where?
Comment: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.07.windowsconfidential.aspx
Answer: In a domain environment, you don't need to save credentials, but somehow, sometimes, Windows will do if for you anyway. You can remove the cached credentials by navigating:
Control Panel/User Accounts/Manger your Credentials
And then clicking "remove from vault"
Comment: Yep. Windows will store passwords automatically for servers you authenticate to (the "remember my credentials" box). This includes file shares, printer shares, and RDP session credentials. Basically anywhere you see a Windows security prompt (yes, websites too!) it can be stored there.


Do Greek students use Greek letters to denote angles?

Question: In western schools is a tradition to use Greek letters to denote angles. I wonder what about Greek schools do they also use Greek letters to denote angles or do they prefer other kind of alphabet to avoid confusion?
Comment: please do not double-post
https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/4634929/do-greek-students-use-greek-letters-to-denote-angles
Comment: @MichaelBächtold I live in Israel and the students use x and y, even though they have a totally different alphabet.
Comment: Another silly follow up question: how math expressions are written in cultures with right-to-left writing?
Comment: Silly follow up question: which letters do they use for x and y?
Answer: An answer to both question and first comment:
Usually, numbers or the letters phi, omega are selected to denote angles, while x and y are the standard symbols for independent and dependent variables in functions.
See for example the 10th grade (15 years old) geometry book: http://ebooks.edu.gr/ebooks/v/pdf/8547/2608/22-0236-01_Eukleideia-Geometria_A-Lykeiou_Vivlio-Mathiti/ Theorem 1 at page 26,
and
The Algebra book of the same grade at http://ebooks.edu.gr/ebooks/v/pdf/8547/2466/22-0270-01_Algebra-kai-Stoicheia-Pithanotiton_A-Lykeiou_Vivlio-Mathiti/ Definition at page 146.


Ubuntu 15.04 install error. stuck in the third step.. please help

Question: While trying to install ubuntu 15.04 in my dell laptop, I'm unable to go further steps after the step where we are prompted select the third party mp3 software....
The error is "the root file system is not defined. please correct this from partitioning menu".
I'm unable to go to the next step to select partitions and other options.
Please help..
Thank you
Answer: Try restarting the computer and disabling the check for enabling third party software then you can install it manually after installation via 'Sudo apt-get install rythmbox'
Answer: When you select the partitioning scheme, Just opt for "Erase disk and install Ubuntu" (or something similar.  It will erase everything on disk and install ubuntu only).  That should automatically 'define' the root filesystem for you.  What it's really doing is assigning a mount point to your main partition where everything is stored.


Third party gambling

Question: In my country of Norway online gambling is legal, but the banks are not permitted to transfer money to online gambling companies. So all transfers of money to online gambling sites are done thru third party. is it possible to set up a system using bitcoins to allow people to transfer money to and from a online gambling site?
Comment: Legally, I think it's pretty much dependent on what these "third parties" are allowed to do. Technically it's possible as far as you can use a bitcoin exchange from your bank account. What kind of answer are you expecting from the bitcoin community? Could you clarify your question?
Comment: The technical possibility obviously is available, as the bitcoin gambling space is thriving and there are numerous websites that accept payments in bitcoin. If that is what you are asking, the question shows 'no research effort'. However, if this a question concerning the legality of setting up such a service in Norway, you should consult a lawyer in Norway. :)
Comment: why not just gamble with bitcoins. More easily verifiable and fairness will attract customers
Answer: I'm not a gambler, but it's probably doable:
It depends what sort of payments your chosen gambling site accepts. If they accept bitcoins, then simply buy some BTC at an exchange funded using your bank account, then withdraw your new BTC from the exchange directly into your gambling account.
If you chosen gambling site doesn't accept BTC, you could always still transfer it via and exchange, although this seems a bit silly as there are probably cheaper services to send the money via.
With this method, you'll obviously incur transaction fees at the exchange, as well as deposit/withdrawal fees, and possibly currency conversion fees.
Another alternative that wouldn't use Bitcoin would be to send the money via TransferWise. TransferWise recently stopped handling Bitcoin related transactions, they also may not be happy about sending money to gambling websites, although I'm not sure.
tl;dr Yes - convert it to Bitcoin and back into fiat if that's all your gambling site accepts. Could prove costly though.

Third party gambling


Is there a way to find out if a patented item is currently in production / being sold somewhere?

Question: If I am interested in an item described in a patent, how would I figure out t how to buy it / where to buy it? Even if I find it listed as a product, it often leads to a broken or expired link. Is there a general way to find out if an patented item is in production?
Comment: As I think this could get close votes, I'll add that I think it's marginally on-topic as the title asks a general question, not particularly about products.
Answer: In general, no.
Also, remember that since owning a patent does not grant the right to make and sell the invention, but only to stop others from doing that, it may well be that an invention is patented, but that an earlier, broader patent prevents the patent owner from making and selling the invention.
That being said, a few jurisdictions require patent owners to, on a regular basis, submit "statements of working", which describe if and how the invention has been commercially exploited. (The goal of this requirement is to make it easier for local manufacturers to seek compulsory licenses - at least on paper.)
India is one such jurisdiction - the statement of working is called a "Form 27" (reference). So, if a patent has an Indian counterpart, you can try to search the Indian Patent Office's database.
Update: actually, it seems that the database only covers the years 2012 and 2013 (!)
Answer: You can try to contact the owner of the patent (see How can I contact the owner of a patent?).
But in general, no, a patent can be traced back to the owner, but not to any product directly, so you can try to research that owner or the owners company maybe, other than that, there is no way to know from a patent view. Of course, you can try to find the invention via google.


Email Alert behaves differently for 'Guest' & 'Guest License' users

Question: I have a form on public community & when a user submits it, an application record gets created. On the creation of the application record, have a process builder which sends an email. But this email alert is not working.
Now another scenario, where I have a force.com site page there is also the same form inside vf page, which also does the same thing as creating application records on form submission & in the backend we have a process builder to send an email. But here email gets delivered successfully.
So have checked all the permissions of these two profiles & seems ok. But I noticed one diffrence that the profile for the Community guest user is of 'Guest User License' type & the profile for Force.com Guest user is of 'Guest' type. So might be this is the problem as email works for the force.com site but not for the public community site.
Answer: Go to the site user profile and check 'Send Emails' under General User Permission settings.


Lucifera Crocosmia -I want to collect the seeds -the pods are still green how long do I wait?

Question: I have two Lucifera Crocosmia plants that lost their flowers. I want to collect the seeds, but the pods are still green. How long do I wait?
They look like in the picture below, a couple of pods and then there are those small bulbs that I do not know what they are. The pods are still green. Should I collect them now? If not what is a good sign they are ready?
Answer: Wkimedia commons has a nice image of Montbretia fully ripe and mature capsules with seeds. As you can see the capsules turn brown and split open revealing the seeds. Normally on a seed spike like this the capsules do not all open at the same time so it will be easy to track when they start to open. If you have a lot of spikes and can afford the experiment you might consider cutting a stem and allowing it to dry in an open paper bag to see if you can collect fully ripened seeds in the case that the mature capsules release the seeds too quickly.
Comment: What are the smaller like undeveloped pods?
Answer: If you want more plants, Crocosmia grow from corms; these usually increase quite rapidly even in a year, and especially 2 years, meaning you can dig up a clump, divide and plant elsewhere.
Seeds gathered from the pods are sometimes sterile, but those that aren't  will take around 2 years before flowering, and Crocosmia does not necessarily come true from seed, so the resulting plants may or may not be like 'Lucifer'.
The smaller pods in your image are exactly as you describe them - undeveloped seed pods which may never develop properly.


Do chromosomes change with time?

Question: An offspring is 23 chromosomes of mother and 23 of father, if one of the mate learns say music after the birth of their first child— will their second offspring have better music skills than former? about my knowledge of biology, so far I read about DNA, Genome, chromosomes and genetic engineering, I am an engineer by profession.
Comment: You might want to read about [epigenetics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics)
Comment: @Remi.b — But the Wikipedia article you cite is a mish-mash of misleading nonsense.
Answer: Short Answer: Probably, at least a little, much research still needs to be done.  For a great paper on this see here.
Your question can be answered in two parts:

Can Epigenetics be inherited - The answer to the simple question in your title, do chromosomes change with time, is yes.  There are copying errors, and carcinogenic mutations that can permanently change cells' genomes.  Less permanent is epigenetics, which are temporary chemical modifications to the DNA which changes how it is expressed. The epigenetics of the cell may change for various reasons from the cell undergoing mitosis to a wildly changing diet.  However, when sperm and egg cells are formed these epigentic modifications are typically wiped from the genome in order to remove any possible damaging marks.  However, there is a growing body of literature which states that some marks escape the purge and change the characteristics of the progeny.  Studies include scare-treating mice, 1836 famine, fatty rats, human psychological changes.  While the exact genes causing the change is unknown, there is clearly a strong correlation
Can Music Skill be Captured in Epigenetics - Music skill is to difficult to measure biologically, but likely has some links in speech skills, which would be captured in the brain, and muscle skills.  While there is some evidence for there being an muscle epi-memory, brain epigenetic inheritance is more tenuous (although see this exciting paper on RNA causing memory changes through epigenetics).  I would say the general scientific consensus is that there is some relation between epigentics, and memory, and music skill - there is a great deal of work still to be done.
Answer: Until recently, the answer to your question would have been a definitive "no", because is smacks of the rejected Larmarckian ideas of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. And the example you provided, about musical skills, that would be "no" as well from a genetic perspective, although the hearing of music around the house may have cultural impacts on the second child. However the new field of epigenetics has revealed that DNA methylation, over the course of ones life can influence offspring of future generations. There was a community in Sweden that took very detailed health records over generations. The effects of a famine in 1836 showed up in the grandchildren of the survivors. It is further explained here: https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-an-1836-famine-altered-the-genes-of-children-born-d-1200001177
Comment: Still smacks of Lamarckism, and there is absolutely no evidence or intellectual framework for acquired music skills being associated with methylation of genes, this changing the musicality of an individual, or being responsible for musicality in offspring.
Comment: No, it was a good question. The Swedish study was rejected for years, with the simply statement that what had been observed could not be. The question was not about music, but about change in inheritance over time. Music was just an example.
Comment: The question has obviously been asked by an outsider. I think a good answer should start with an introduction to epigenetics.
Comment: Can you provide an instance of a mammalian gene that:

(a)  is normally unmethylated at some site but has been shown to be demonstrate changed expression following methylation at this site (even just turned off or on),
*and*
(b) this specific methylation has been demonstrated to be induced by some environmental stimulus,
*and*
(c) methylation at this site following the said stimulas has been shown to be passed on to the offspring,
*and*
(d) the offspring have been shown to exhibit the changed gene expression resulting from the methylation?

Do chromosomes change with time?


Gravity of a disc

Question: What proof is there that the center of gravity of a disc is at its center when the gravitational field is not uniform, such as objects close to the edge of the disc, or lying within the body of the disc?
Comment: Symmetry. It couldn't be anywhere else.
Comment: I think the question need to be clarified. @Andrew has the right answer to the question as asked, but I suspect that john meant to ask about the direction of gravitational force, which is a different game entirely (i.e. for test particles much nearer the surface than to the nearest edge the force is effective downward along the local normal, and not toward the geometric center).
Comment: when you derive the equations as given in http://notizblock.yukterez.net/viewtopic.php?p=1118#p1118 and the links therein you can clearly see that the acceleration in the center is 0 because the pull is the same in every direction and therefore cancels out.
Answer: Actually, Center Of Mass is the only critical issue, symmetry is irrelevant. At the COM the gravitational field is flat, i.e. zero G, so COM is coincident with COG. Pretty much by definition.
The question is about G at the center of symmetry of a disc when there are other objects in the system. Since these will move the COM, the 0g point will move away from the center of the disc itself. So there is no such proof. There is only the integral of Gm1m2/r^2 of the delta masses over their radii from every point in the system, solved for the point where the integral is 0. This is only coincident with the geometrical center of a disc or sphere (or any symmetrical shape for that matter) when there are no other massy objects involved.
Answer: I assume here a general relativistic standpoint, as this is the most general case, and because it has interesting observational consequences.
The idea about center-of-mass is usually applied to calculate the gravitational field outside spherically symmetric matter distributions. This does not assume that the field is uniform. In particular it may decrease as a function of distance form the center of the disk or sphere.
In the theory of general relativity Birkhoff's theorem states (in simple terms) that the gravitational field outside a spherically symmetrical matter distribution is only a function of the total mass, and not the extend of the matter or its distribution as a function of distance from the center, or even as a function of time!
Note that this assumes a spherically symmetric matter distribution. Namely it has to be isotropic, and because of the symmetry it will thus have a uniquely defined center, which is completely analogous to the center of mass. Also it assumes that the test particle is outside the matter distribution. Inside there are higher order corrections to the gravitational field.
The physical consequence is that no measurement of only the gravitational field can be made to distinguish between a homogeneous sphere of mass M, a point (all located at the center of the sphere) gravitational source of the same mass (eg. a black hole) or a radially oscillating star.
This all assumes that the observer, or test particle, is in the same plane as the gravitating object. In the case of a 2D disk then, this assumes that the test particle is in the plane of the disk. Outside this plane, the theorem will not hold true. Surely enough, a particle initially traveling towards the center, may well end up intersecting the disk away from the center, because of the anisotropic gravitational field.
Answer: The condition that an object can be replaced by a point at is center of mass as far as gravity is concerned applies to a sphere. It does not apply to a disc. If gravity dropped off as the inverse of distance, instead of the inverse of the square of distance, it would apply to a disc, at least in the plane if the disc.
Comment: The location of the centre of mass depends on the distribution of mass, not on the details of the local gravitational field.

Gravity of a disc


Getting the next AUTO_INCREMENT value of a SQLite database

Question: Using the typical SQLiteDatabase object in Android's API, what can I do to get the next AUTO_INCREMENT value of a particular column (ie. id) without affecting the value itself. Is there a method for that? Or what query should I execute to get that result. Keep in mind that SQLiteDatabase.query() returns a Cursor object, so I'm not too sure how to deal with that directly if I just want to get a value out of it.
Comment: Trying to get this value is a bad design pattern from the get-go. What is it you're trying to accomplish?
Answer: You're right. The first answer (still below) only works without an AUTOINCREMENT for id. With AUTOINCREMENT, the values are stored in a separate table and used for the increment. Here's an example of finding the value:
public void printAutoIncrements(){
    String query = "SELECT * FROM SQLITE_SEQUENCE";
    Cursor cursor = mDb.rawQuery(query, null);
    if (cursor.moveToFirst()){
        do{
            System.out.println("tableName: " +cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex("name")));
            System.out.println("autoInc: " + cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex("seq")));

        }while (cursor.moveToNext());
    }

    cursor.close();

}

See: http://www.sqlite.org/autoinc.html
First Answer:
You can query for the max of the _id column, such as:
String query = "SELECT MAX(id) AS max_id FROM mytable";
Cursor cursor = db.rawQuery(query, null);

int id = 0;
if (cursor.moveToFirst())
{
    do
    {
        id = cursor.getInt(0);
    } while(cursor.moveToNext());
}
return id;

This works for row ids that haven't been specified as "INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT" (all tables have a row id column).
Comment: @hanry cursor.getCount() will most likely be the wrong approach every time: any time a row has been deleted from the table. For tables without an autoincrement row id, the default row id is incremented from the max.
Comment: The max id of the table may not necessarily be the AUTO_INCREMENT value because what if rows with higher id's were deleted? Getting the max id would not be correct.
Comment: @aha you can obviously use **cursor.getCount()** and increment its value and store it as auto-increment value.......
Comment: before trying to do it we have to check if have any row was inserted to this table, if we don't have return some constant id
Comment: `cursor.moveToFirst()` is false
Comment: didn't manage to get it work, `cursor.moveToFirst()` is always false...
Answer: This is the best way to get the last ID on auto increment PRIMARY KEY with SQLITE
String query = "select seq from sqlite_sequence WHERE name = 'Table_Name'"
Comment: Excellent! SQLite insert automatically the next cursor value. Best way!!
Answer: An important remark about the SQLITE_SEQUENCE table.
The documentation says

The SQLITE_SEQUENCE table is created and initialized automatically whenever a normal table that contains an AUTOINCREMENT column is created.

So the SQLITE_SEQUENCE table is created, but NOT the row associated with the table that contains the AUTOINCREMENT column. That row is created with the first insert query (with "seq" value of 1).
That means that you must doing at least one insert operation before looking for the next autoincrement value of a specific table. It could be done for example just after the creation of the table, performing an insert and a delete of a dummy row.
Comment: yes we just have to check if we can moveToFirst or getCount before trying to get next increment value
Answer: Here is what I use to get the next AUTOINCREMENT value for a specific table:
/**
 * Query sqlite_sequence table and search for the AUTOINCREMENT value for tableName
 * @param tableName The table name with which the AUTOINCREMENT value is associated.
 *
 * @return The next AUTOINCREMENT value for tableName
 * If an INSERT call was not previously executed on tableName, the value 1 will
 * be returned. Otherwise, the returned value will be the next AUTOINCREMENT.
 */
private long getNextAutoIncrement(String tableName) {
    /*
     * From the docs:
     * SQLite keeps track of the largest ROWID using an internal table named "sqlite_sequence".
     * The sqlite_sequence table is created and initialized automatically
     * whenever a normal table that contains an AUTOINCREMENT column is created.
     */
    String sqliteSequenceTableName = "sqlite_sequence";
    /*
     * Relevant columns to retrieve from sqliteSequenceTableName
     */
    String[] columns = {"seq"};
    String selection = "name=?";
    String[] selectionArgs = { tableName };

    Cursor cursor = mWritableDB.query(sqliteSequenceTableName,
            columns, selection, selectionArgs, null, null, null);

    long autoIncrement = 0;

    if (cursor.moveToFirst()) {
        int indexSeq = cursor.getColumnIndex(columns[0]);
        autoIncrement = cursor.getLong(indexSeq);
    }

    cursor.close();

    return autoIncrement + 1;
}

Comment: Just to know, what happens if you insert a record with ID = ´autoIncrement + 1´ and then you insert a record without specifying an ID ? For example : The sequence = 9, you return 10 in this case and insert a record with ID = 10 (specified). Then, you insert a new record without specifying an ID. Does SQLite know that he has to insert 11 for the ID ? Or will he try to insert 10 and result in an error ?
Answer: Inside the SQLiteOpenHelper you use, start a transaction. Insert some data and then rollback.
Such a way, you 'll be able to get the next row id, like this:
public long nextId() {
    long rowId = -1;

    SQLiteDatabase db = getWritableDatabase();
    db.beginTransaction();
    try {
        ContentValues values = new ContentValues();
        // fill values ...

        // insert a valid row into your table
        rowId = db.insert(TABLE_NAME, null, values);

        // NOTE: we don't call  db.setTransactionSuccessful()
        // so as to rollback and cancel the last changes
    } finally {
        db.endTransaction();
    }
    return rowId;
}

Answer: It's work.
public static long getNextId(SQLiteDatabase db, String tableName) {
    Cursor c = null;
    long seq = 0;
    try {
        String sql = "select seq from sqlite_sequence where name=?";
        c = db.rawQuery(sql, new String[] {tableName});
        if (c.moveToFirst()) {
            seq = c.getLong(0);
        }
    } finally {
        if (c != null) {
            c.close();
        }
    }
    return seq + 1;
}

Answer: You can use cursor.getInt(i); method
i here is index of the id column
Cursor c = db.rawQuery("Select * From mSignUp", null);
            String mail = null;
            try {
                while (c.moveToNext()) {
                    mail = c.getString(0);
                    String pas = c.getString(1);
                    Toast.makeText(getApplicationContext(), "Name = " + mail + " Pass = " + pas, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
                }
            }catch (CursorIndexOutOfBoundsException e){
                Log.e("OutOfBound", Log.getStackTraceString(e));
            }
            finally {
                c.close();
            }


Using ogrinfo how to extract number of columns and attribute population?

Question: Currently i'm using this DO ogrinfo -al -so to extract Projection, Feature count, Field_names for a bunch of files in batch mode. Is it possible to extract number of fields & how many fields are populated with attributes ? For eg, let us assume a point file which has 70 points and three fields - ID, Name,Type. For those 70 points i would like to extract information of how many "ID" field has values, "Name" field has values and "Type" field has values.
Answer: You can do everything that is possible to do with SQL also with ogrinfo by utilizing the SQLite dialect http://www.gdal.org/ogr_sql_sqlite.html.
Once you know that the problem turns into a question about how to make such a query and the answer can be found from Stackoverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17194145/sql-count-based-on-column-value
The following query might work for you but remove first newlines which I added for clarity.
ogrinfo -dialect sqlite -sql "
SELECT
COUNT(case WHEN ID is not null THEN 1 ELSE NULL END) as count_ID,
COUNT(case WHEN Name is not null THEN 1 ELSE NULL END) as count_Name,
COUNT(case WHEN Type is not null THEN 1 ELSE NULL END) as count_Type
FROM your_layer" your_datasource

I tested same kind of query with statas.shp shapefile and it seems to work. I demonstrate also the flexibility of SQLite dialect by counting the number of states which belong to SUB_REGION='Mtn' as count_2.
ogrinfo -dialect sqlite -sql "select count
(case WHEN STATE_NAME is not null THEN 1 ELSE NULL END) as count_1,
count(case WHEN SUB_REGION='Mtn' THEN 1 ELSE NULL END) as count_2
from states" states.shp
INFO: Open of `states.shp'
      using driver `ESRI Shapefile' successful.

Layer name: SELECT
Geometry: None
Feature Count: 1
Layer SRS WKT:
(unknown)
count_1: Integer (0.0)
count_2: Integer (0.0)
OGRFeature(SELECT):0
  count_1 (Integer) = 49
  count_2 (Integer) = 8

Comment: query works fine for batch of files with same Field_name. But our input layers has different Field_names.
Comment: I fear that you will need a script that reads the field names of your layer and loops and inserts those into the SQL part. Let's hope that some Python guru takes the challenge. Perhaps it will then be off-topic to this question "Using ogrinfo...".


global.asa where does it belong?

Question: I'm moving some ASP code from one server to another. The location names are slightly different and I suspect that now the "global.asa" isn't getting called properly. The location is in c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\myApp.
Answer: It belongs in the root folder of your application. Also make sure that that folder is a application in the IIS manager. There is a textbox for application name, and right next to it a button "Create", if the folder isn't already an application.
Answer: Make sure that "myApp" in IIS is defined as an application.  I would also check the .Net application mappings to make sure .Net is handling your requests.
Answer: The global.asa should be in the root of your virtual directory.  Note that global.asa is used by asp not asp.net.
You can generally tell by looking at IIS Manager whether or not your directory is a virtual directory as it will not look like a yellow folder.  If it does look like the typical yellow folder, right click the parent "Default Web Site" or whatever, and choose new virtual directory.
Alternatively, the global.asa can go in the root of the Web.  Which is typically C:\inetpub\wwwroot if you are using the "Default Web Site"
Answer: For convenience, I want to keep in a subdirectory. Apparently, you have to designate that directory as an application. Here's a link that describes how:
http://www.calcaria.net/ASP/2006/04/globalasa-file-doesnt-work.html

Generally, I'm against the idea of files which are called auto-magically and not referred to in the code. If you are a noob like me, you can go off the rails for a while, before you track it down. I just lost a couple of hours on this silliness.

global.asa where does it belong?


US provisional patent application considered disclosure by the Indian patent office

Question: Say I filed a provisional patent application at the USPTO on June 1st, 2020. The following year I filed a non-provisional on May 30th, 2021. I think file a complete patent application at the Indian Patent Office on Sept. 15th 2021. Will the Indian Patent Office consider my June 1,2020 provisional patent application at USPTO as a disclosure?
Comment: I'm not an expert so I won't answer.  However I don't think provisional applications actually publish so I doubt it would count as a disclosure.
Answer: No — since it was not published. But you can't use it to get a priority date for the patent in India (more than a year delay) unless there is a provision in Indian law to restore priority or it was withdrawn in the US before the US non provisional was filed.
Since you can't rely on any earlier priority date under the Paris Convention, disclosure before the filing in India would break novelty and disqualify the application unless the disclosure falls under a grace period law in India. See https://ipindia.gov.in/writereaddata/Portal/Images/pdf/Final_FREQUENTLY_ASKED_QUESTIONS_-PATENT.pdf. Page 4
This is from 2020. I do not know if it still the law there.
Comment: Thank you @GeorgeWhite. While not a part of the original question I am curious about "you can't use it to get a priority date for the patent in India (more than a year delay)". Is it even possible to get an earlier priority date for an Indian complete patent using the provisional filed at USPTO if the Indian complete patent is filed within 12 months of the US provisional patent application? Maybe I should ask this as a separate question for the benefit of the community in general.


2001 VW TDI New Beetle after refrigerant added, car has an on and off pulsing vibration. the ac is on and off as well and the acceleration falters

Question: After my husband added coolant to my VW AC, that same night a rumbling vibration started (sounds like under the hood)  - on/off on/off.  It stays on when idle. (Manual transmission) Now the AC is coming on and off - cold, then barely cool - and with less power.  Also, when I accelerate it falters, like I'm stepping on and off the gas pedal
Answer: Compressor cycling is caused mostly by low Freon levels or over charged system. Likely possibility is it has been over charged. Recommend taking it to an A/C Certified shop and having the system evacuated, vacuumed and charged to the correct amount.


Why do my raster pixels not align?

Question: I am working in ArcMap 10.2.2.  I am trying to project a NED 3m dataset from a Geographic Coordinate System to a Projected Coordinate System.  The output rasters pixels do not overlap the original rasters.  I have used the snap to raster in Environments, both with the Background processing enabled and not.  I have tried running the projection in ArcCatolog and Arcmap.  Does anyone have any idea how to align these rasters.
Comment: What are the "original rasters?'
Comment: The "original" is a 3 m elevation raster with the spatial reference GCS_North_America_1983 that is clipped down to the study area.
Comment: I guess that I'm confused. If you are projecting to a new coordinate system, shouldn't you expect some (even small) amount of shifting? Are you using the same datum?
Comment: They are in different datums.  So a shift should be expected, they should not line up?
Comment: That's correct, see my answer for complete explanation.
Answer: You will not be able to align these rasters in different coordinate systems especially since they are built from different datum. In the screen capture here, I have taken a raster with UTM projected coordinates and reprojected to GCS WGS 84. You can see the difference in linear shift of the corner of roughly 60m. Unless all of your rasters are projected in the same system, there's no way to guarantee registration between cells.
Answer: Are the raster pixel sizes the same? If one is 3m and the other is 10m then there is no way that they can correctly overlap. I would look into that first. Second, if there is a common raster that you can clip it to outside of the ones you are using that shares that same cell size, then I would use that. Double check on the cell sizes to make sure that there aren't any discrepancies. The coordinate system change may cause some shifting as well, depending on which systems you are using. I would try to change the coordinate system within ArcCatalog by right clicking the layer, and then going to properties, and changing the system from the geographic coordinate system to the projected coordinate system. Then reload the data into the map.
Comment: I am only using 1 raster, the raster I want to project, to a Projected Coordinate system.  The product of the projection is the raster that is not overlapping with it's original, the one that is in the geographic coordinate system.  The raster is already clipped to the area that I need it to be, I also ran the projection on the entire state, but had the same issues.   I will attempt the ArcCatalog suggestion now. .
Comment: Let me know if it works and I'll edit the answer.

Why do my raster pixels not align?


Why is the Deck of Many Things considered unbalanced?

Question: The general consensus of the internet is that the Deck of Many Things is overpowered and unbalanced. I can't see why. Sure it can make your character a king, but it can also just make your character a vegetable. That seems balanced, just extreme. The only thing I can see is if a DM gives it at the wrong time and it derails the campaign, but that's not really the items fault.
Comment: This isn't a primarily opinion-based question *at all*. Any expert player knows that there is a single right answer to this question.
Comment: [Related] [Why is the Deck of Many Things called the Eater of Campaigns?](https://rpg.stackexchange.com/q/57423/321)
Comment: This is definitely an interesting question but as written I think it may be a bit too opinion-based. By what measure would we judge whether one answer is any better or worse than another? One thing to remember is that this site doesn't handle opinion seeking questions. Questions need to conceivably be able to have a single, best answer so we need some criteria by which to judge that.
Comment: Could you explain what you consider to be "unbalanced"?
Comment: What I consider to be unbalanced would be something that is more powerful than it should be, or weaker than it should be. But the deck of many things is just as powerful as it should be. Powerful goods and terrible bads.
Answer: It has nothing to do with balance.
The problem with the deck of many things has absolutely nothing to do with "balance." It's not even supposed to be balanced, nor does anyone particularly expect it to be.
The problem with the deck of many things is that there are way, way too many cards in the deck that simply ruin campaigns. Draw the wrong cards—and if you draw more than a couple, you almost-certainly will—and it becomes impossible to figure out how on earth the campaign is supposed to continue from there. It's a nightmare to DM for, which makes it a nightmare for players too—because they rely on the DM being able to, ya know, DM. Literally any introduction of the deck of many things into a campaign is just begging for terrible problems—which means unless you are looking to draw your campaign to a "zany" conclusion, it's a mistake to put it in the game.
Comment: Zany conclusions are *a* way to play. ;-)
Comment: @KorvinStarmast Sure, but the *deck of many things* stands a good chance of ruining even a zany campaign—and for my money, it's **really not** all that funny or zany.
Comment: I've experienced the deck in editions 0E, 1E, BX, and 2E.  It didn't break anything, but it sure made a mess a few times.  So the players dealt with the mess.  We also had PC's die.  We'd roll up a new one and play on  We weren't in a railroad campaign on an author's script (like the current published adventures can sometimes be) and the BBEG's were usually still around ... I guess my point in that comment had to do with there being a lot of different play styles.  I agree that it is potentially campaign wrecking depending on the kind of campaign being run.
Answer: Balance is more than just an equal probability of good and bad
While one could argue the net effect of the deck is neutral (or more likely, negative), that doesn't change that the deck is overly powerful in either a positive or negative direction per use relative to typical power levels provided by the standard game mechanics.
Imagine a simpler item that, when used, has a 50% chance of instantly killing an enemy, and a 50% chance of instantly killing you, no saves. While it's technically balanced in terms of all possible outcomes (you die, or they die), each individual outcome by itself is immensely powerful (either they instantly die, or you instantly die, not both). Both outcomes are extremely powerful, and no other game mechanic offers power like that, so it would be considered to be overpowered.
Similar to the deck, while good or bad may come, the good has a chance to be overwhelmingly good, and the bad overwhelmingly bad relative to normal game mechanics. There's a risk, but the outcomes themselves lacks balance, and thus can easily break the game.


Minimum temperature of a smouldering fire? Read below

Question: What is the lowest temperature in the hottest part of the ember of an oxygen starved low temperature smouldering fire the hypothetical fire glows a dull and faint orange at night, not red but orange, but very faint nevertheless and is not seen at dusk or twilight . It produces a lot of smoke and carbon monoxide , burns for days very slowly . An unpuffed cigarette can ignite paper in 30 seconds and an incense stick instantly , this fire takes about 1 minute . If touched it's skin burn is similar to a curling iron on medium to low heat in the same amount of exposure time , but it still is obviously at least 3 times as hot , but skin burn is usually more a product of heat flux and conductivity than degrees . Smouldering pipe tobacco and slow Garbage dump fires  are the inspiration for this hypothetical fire . What would the average maximum temperature be in the glow ? I know 932 Fahrenheit or 500 Celsius is generally an accepted minimum glow or incandescence temperature , but a smouldering fire in the real world is far from a black body furnace and has different emissivity . What would it be ? My hypothesizes is 600 Celsius or 1112 Fahrenheit .
Answer: The temperatures for smoldering combustion and glowing combustion will of course depend on the material as well as the physical characteristics of the object burning. Moreover, smoldering and glowing combustion can transition quickly to flaming combustion with sufficient oxygen enrichment.
To put things into perspective, according to the site:
https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae1.cfm

The temperature of a lit cigarette without drawing is 400 C on the side of the lit portion and 580 C on the middle portion of the lit cigarette.

The temperature of a lit cigarette during drawing is 700 C on the middle of the lit portion.

The first is an example of smoldering combustion. The second glowing combustion.
Hope this helps.


What are the disadvantages to the site owner to have third parties e-mails displayed publicly?

Question: I frequently have to remind my members not to post their e-mails due to spam bots. One of them told me he doesn't care about that since his spam filter is good enough. If I allow him to do that, are there disadvantages to my website?
Answer: A small one.
Some spammers grab email address and domains to forge From: addresses.  If this user's email is public, that might increase the odds that a spammer will forge with it, pretending to be sending email from your domain even though the spam is actually coming from someplace else.  In which case, you might notice a slight uptick in warning notices to your maildaemon account, undeliverable email and the like.  I presume you already receive a high volume of these warnings and are already filtering them appropriately.
Other than that, I can't imagine any possible downsides.
Further, the user is right, if you have a good spam filter and know enough not to fall for a phishing attack, the risk of publishing your email address are minimal.
Answer: E-mail address is not only an e-mail box. In many cases it's also:

login name
password retrieval channel

And user login names enumeration is a threat.
Comment: Excuse me but that doesn't answer the question.