Do I need to switch off A/C external breaker for winter?

Question: My home's A/C has an external circuit breaker. Do I need to switch it off for the winter?
Answer: There is no need to switch off the external breaker serving the outside condensing unit. I have never done so in 40 years at our house. I have never heard of anyone doing so, and I have never heard it recommended. In our installation the external box adjacent to the condensing unit contains a double pole switch, not a breaker, but I only shut this off to service the unit. However, my experience is in the relatively warm winters of Dallas, Texas.
Comment: Also, many compressors (especially those for heat pumps) have a small heater to keep the compressor oil liquified.
Answer: No, there's no benefit to it whatsoever. Also, on most split systems, the compressor is still in use when the heat is on. For split gas systems, they normally "steal"  power from a leg on the compressor circuit to power the blower.
Answer: No, you should not be doing that. It will have no advantage to switch it off. Many of the houses run for long time with external circuit breaker that is working along the HVAC system.
Comment: I'm inclined to upvote, but I don't understand your second sentence. You might revise for clarity.


Is version 1.7.3 no longer supported?

Question: Having trouble uploading .csv file into a template, as of just this week. We're running version 1.7.3. Is this version no longer supported?
Answer: That's a really old version. It's not supported by ellislab anymore. My guess is that the hosting changed some stuff like the php version (because 1.x needs a really old php version too)

Is version 1.7.3 no longer supported?


Regarding the fuel pump

Question: My fuel pump is failing. There is a lot of leakage happening. Please provide me some tips for taking better care of the fuel pump
Comment: Mechanical? Electrical? Front mounted? Rear mounted? In-tank? Car make, model & year?
Answer: There's really not much you can do, fuel pumps wear out and they all go eventually. You don't oil them, you don't grease them, they just do their job. The best you can do to extend a fuel pump's life is to make sure the fuel flow is unrestricted: check/change the fuel filter (on a diesel this is often done every service, on a gasoline/petrol car it's every 20,000 to 150,000 miles depending on the manufacturer), check fuel lines, etc.
In any case, if you have a leak you need to determine if it's leaking fuel or oil and act accordingly. If it's electronic then it's probably near the tank and an oil leak is not an issue, if it's mechanical it could be leaking oil from the engine through a seal. If it's mechanical and the leak is oil then you need a gasket replacement, and the pump should be checked for condition to see whether that needs to be swapped as well. If it is leaking fuel then it's definitely time for a replacement unit.
Comment: The only *real* thing you can do, besides what you've stated, is to ensure you have some fuel in the tank. Most in-tank electric fuel pumps utilize the fuel to cool them. If you continually run your tank low of fuel, the pump can overheat which will shorten its lifespan. Keeping at least a 1/4 tank of fuel in the vehicle is enough to keep it cooled in most cases.

Regarding the fuel pump


plasma frequency in non-neutral plasma

Question: Is it possible to see the oscillations with plasma frequency in a gas of particles of the same charge (not mixture of positive and negative charges)?
Comment: Be a little careful in asking these short questions next time. Usually (not this time) they immediately end up in the low quality queue.
Answer: Note that plasma oscillations in the long wavelength limit are due to the restoring force originated in the attraction between positive and negative charges. When only like charges exist, such oscillations tend to disappear. See the book by Ashcroft and Mermin.
Answer: I am not an expert on non-neutral plasma but I am going to explain what I know. One of the wave modes that exists in non-neutral plasma is Langmuir waves, which has a dispersion relation of (in neutral plasma):

The previous equation is also called Bohm-Gross dispersion relation. The terms in the right hand side are the plasma frequency of electrons squared and the other term is 3 by the wave vector squared by the thermal velocity of electrons squared. The previous equation allows for a zero value of the wave vector. In such a case the frequency of oscillation is equal to plasma frequency. In that case that oscillation is called plasma oscillation but it is not a wave since the wave vector is zero.
For non-neutral plasma, the plasma frequency as a parameter exists. Langmuir waves exist as well. If your question is whether plasma oscillations exist (for zero wave vector), then the answer I suppose is no. In this following papers have a look at the dispersion relation of Langmuir waves for purely ionic plasma and purely electronic plasma; you see that the frequency is zero when the wave vector is zero (I am not certain whether it is exactly zero or if it's lower by orders of magnitude than the frequency ranges plotted). Comparing those plots with the same plots for Langmuir waves in neutral plasma, it is clear to see from the last equation that for zero wave vectors, the frequency of oscillation is non-zero. See the figure below for neutral plasma (taken from Chen chapter 4)

Hope that helped!!
Comment: @Gotaquestion - The Bohm-Gross dispersion relation (the one you cited), and for any other Langmuir-like oscillation, is only true if there is a restoring force in the plasma.  The plasma frequency, $\omega_{pe}$, is derived by taking two sheets of oppositely charged particles and separating them.  Then the equations of motion look like the SHO.  If there are only one species of charged particles, then this type of oscillation will not occur, thus $\omega_{pe}$ $\rightarrow$ 0.

plasma frequency in non-neutral plasma


How to visible phone attribute on customer registration page

Question: I have show phone attribute on registration page. How can i do that
Like email in sign-in information
Answer: Adding the phone is somehow complex, because it is part of the Address entity, not the Customer entity (it would be easier to add any of the Customer fields, like Middle Name, Date of Birth or Gender).
So you can add additional fields to the "Create New Customer Account" form by overriding the vendor/magento/module-customer/view/frontend/templates/additionalinfocustomer.phtml template.
But you would need to figure out how to save it correctly, so it can be displayed as the screenshot you attached. I guess it is not possible to save it if you don't create the whole address for the customer (along with address, city, etc).
Comment: Thank you for your great response then any thing possiblity to add phone number because i have  use a phone number in rest api for that resson i tried this. And i am new in magento.


How can I control the viewport without a mouse?

Question: Is there a way to specify the coordinates of the viewport and direction that the viewport faces without using a mouse or pointing device, in other words, by entering numbers somewhere.
Comment: Do you just want to know how to navigate without a mouse, or do you want to use this for scripting?
Comment: I'm not so interested in writing scripts but if I have to I will. The end result needs to be that I can control the view port in a reasonably "easy" way without a mouse. so if i have to write a script to create a command that allows me to use the viewport without a mouse, then, if that is the only way, that is what i will do
Comment: I still miss the workflow you are aiming at, can you describe the case you would want to do this? _(are you reading values from a file for example that you want to use as a view point?)_ This isn't such a hard thing to do, but mostly users prefer to use the mouse for view-navigation so it was never made a prominent feature.
Comment: @ideasman42 I want to do this in situations where there is no mouse. That could be where the mouse is broken. I don't have a mouse, My device does not allow me to use a mouse etc. In my specific case I am using a tablet. thankfully the tablet provider sold me a keyboard that has a touch pad, effectively turning the tablet into a laptop, but sometimes I like to use the tablet without that keyboard (and touch-pad). so what i really want is a way to use the view-port without a mouse.
Comment: @axrwkr, there are so many areas of blender that need mouse input, Im not sure you can realistically expect to be a proficient Blender user without one, while I'm all for keyboard driven workflows (vim etc), Simple things like selecting a vertex or an object just don't work well via the keyboard.
Comment: @ideasman42 with regards to mouse usage, indeed that is the way that blender is designed, you must have a mouse to use it and your other hand on the keyboard. Blender allows you to control certain things in a very fine tuned way, using a keyboard to enter specific values, rather than trusting the steadiness of the hand and judgement of the eye. In asking this question, I had hoped to find ways to navigate the 3d view without the mouse in a more "controlled" way, this can help in situations where it's uncomfortable or not possible to use a mouse such as when using a tablet or sitting on a train
Comment: I must say that years before I laid hands on a tablet, I wanted to have more specific control of the view port and to be able to type in coordinates to move around to specific places, so, I think it's important recognise that being able to navigate the viewport without a mouse is not so much about using blender ineffectively, but more about having control over it
Comment: ctrl+numpad[2,4,6,8] use for slide 3d viewport &&
hold numpad[2,4,6,8] use for rotate viewport &&
ctrl +[+,-] use for zoom in & out
Answer: You won't have fine-tuned control of the viewport without a mouse, but there are extensive options for controlling it via the keyboard:

You can rotate the viewport using 2, 4, 6, and 8. You can also change between "Perspective" and "Orthographic" views by pressing 5.
By holding ctrl and any of the above, you can pan the view.
You can press / to switch between local and global view.
You can use Shift 2 and Shift 6 to roll the view, as of Blender 2.69 (r59707).
You can centre the view on an object by pressing "." on the number pad.
You can zoom in and out of the view using + and -.
You can access the current camera view with 0.

* Note: All of the number commands require that you either use your numberpad or enable "emulate numpad" in the preferences.
Comment: How do we pan forwards and backwards?
Comment: When I press `.` it just brings up options like "Median Point" and "3D Cursor".
Answer: 3d Navigation Addon
There is the 3d Navigation Addon which comes bundled with Blender, which I haven't seen mentioned here yet. I made modifications to this Addon that make it more convenient for me when I don't have a mouse and numpad connected to this laptop and don't want to mess up my key-bindings to compensate.
It would be easy enough to extend this to include an input area for manual input of the view matrix.

Stored Views Addon
This addon called Stored Views may be of interest to you too. It will let you import and export a list of view orientations and configurations.
Comment: Thanks! I haven't tried out your modifications as yet, but I had a go at editing the source code for the add-on and hopefully I can use it as a starting point to find a way to type in numbers and drag sliders to control the viewport
Answer: By default you can't navigate by entering numeric values, in fact I'm wondering why you would want to do this at all.
Lock to an object
Since you ask - I would suggest that you use an object.

Add an empty object
You may need to press N to display the View properties panel
Enable 'Lock to Object' (in the view properties panel)
Rotate the view to align to this objects axis using Shift+1/3/7 (numbers on the number pad)

If you want to enter a number, you can using the object location/rotation. Or you can transform the object using numeric input.

Walk/Fly Mode
Fly mode allows some keyboard navigation, Once you enter fly mode (Shift+F), you can move the view with WASD,RF keys for up/down. However you can't turn your head using this method, for that part you need the mouse.

Note: If you happen to have a file with numbers I think it would be better to write a script that loads the view-ports into camera objects.
Comment: Also, you could make the empty object not visible in the 3D view by turning off its visibility in the Outliner
Comment: **Fly Mode**: when you have the viewport the way you want it, you can press the **enter** key to leave fly mode and keep that view. If you don't like the view press the **escape** key to exit and return to the previous view.
Answer: Besides what RolandiXor has listed, if you need better viewport control than what the numberpad provides, you can write a python script/plugin to orient the viewport.
The view_matrix is what controls the viewport orientation. You could, in theory...

press the space-bar to bring up blender's command menu
select your script/plugin's "Change viewport" command
then enter the desired view coordinates from the plugin

Though, I doubt you'll be able to do anything else useful in blender without a mouse.
Answer:
Go to the user preferences with ⎈ Ctrl⎇ AltU
Change the shortcut in Input > 3D view > Rotate View to something like ⎈ Ctrl LMB
Comment: Welcome to the site :) It's preferred to avoid large amounts of text in images for various reasons. I've edited your answer to include short version of the text from your screenshot.
Comment: This isn't right for the question which is asking a way to change the viewport rotation and location without using a mouse. I don't see how your answer changes that.
Answer: I found a way to rotate the view port on a laptop as if you were using a wheel and track ball on a regular pc.
Setup your user settings
Goto File>User Preferences( CtrlAltU )
Select With: Right
Check: Emulate 3 Button Mouse
Check: Emulate Numpad
Orbit Style: Turntable
Goto bottom and again select: Turntable.
Save User Settings and close that window.
The Laptop's Mouse Pad
Consist of:
The Mouse Pad, Top Left Mouse Button, Top Center Mouse Button,
Top Right Mouse Button, and Bottom Left Mouse Button, and Bottom
Right Mouse Button.
Learning How to use it
The first instinct is to press The Top Center Button and then
slide your finger on the pad, it doesn't seem to work that way.
It worked for me when I first slid my finger on the pad and then
pressing on the Top Center Button while sliding your finger on the
pad. You have to slide your finger on the pad at a not-too-slow
rate and at a not-too-fast rate.
Example:
Move your finger in a circular way on the pad, not too fast and
not too slow, keep moving your finger on the pad, then press the
Top Center Button of the Mouse Pad.  You should be able to see
the view tilt around.  If not, release the Top Center Button,
try moving your finger on the pad slower or faster until you find
that magic speed.


Can you have multiple Dropbox accounts on one computer?

Question: Can Dropbox be used with multiple accounts on one computer?
Comment: @Arjan: Phew, quite the assuption there! I can think of at least one simple legit reason: two Dropbox users sharing the same computer user account (for conveniency) but having individual Dropbox accounts because they're meant to be personal. It's really not a very nice idea having to individually set each folder under Dropbox root as shared.
Comment: I assume you want this to get more free storage? If that's not the reason, then maybe all you want is to share folders with other people's accounts: https://www.dropbox.com/help/19
Answer: Maybe you're looking for Dropboxen?
There is a plethora of information on that page regarding multiple accounts as well. To use Dropboxen and avoid the "access denied" errors, you'll need to use symlinks. The symlinks method is also explained on the page.
Comment: It seems to be Windows-specific. Any hints for Linux users?
Comment: @geek: For Win7 and Vista, the Dropboxen page describes running multiple instances with different computer user account credentials. Maybe this method could work on linux as well?
Comment: that doesn't seem to work for two users using the same login account on the same computer though (e.g. a shared computer with just one user name)?
Comment: @Bec that's a whole different beast.
Answer: Instead of using multiple dropbox accounts on one computer, I have multiple accounts, and a different one on each computer.
E.I., I have a work account on my work computer, a personal account on my personal computer, and a shared "Work" folder on my personal account which the work account is connected to.
I have a similar "Family" share which my family's accounts each have.
Protip: Each time you setup a new account use a referral link from your main account to get extra storage :)
Comment: @Protip That is just plain evil. :)
Comment: It's not evil, I actually am referring each of my family into a new dropbox account -- and I don't think the purpose of dropbox is to sync all my personal files to my work machine.
Answer: You dont 'need' dropboxen or any other application to do this. You can do it by hand, its not that hard. If you are adding multiple accounts I have written instructions on my blog http://globalcynic.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/script-to-enable-multiple-dropbox-accounts-in-windows-7/ on how to do this. If your just doing it once, you can create a new user account and install dropbox in the new account, then log into your other account using the runas command to start the application for your other user. Then you have simultaneous instances of dropbox for two different accounts.


Category image for each subcategory in megamenu

Question: How can I add an image, like a thumbnail, for each subcategory in the mega menu. i have tried to upload an image in the content section of the category, but it shows in the category view page, and i tried in SW menu to put it in top block, but the block does not show at all. i need to show it in the menu on top of the category column. exactly similar to this example: https://snag.gy/iUE8uK.jpg. i am using magento 2.2.5, this is the website URL: belsuit.com
Answer: There are Two way to achieve this :
1. you can use third party module like megamenu etc.
2. You can achieve this by following steps:
a. Create one category image attribute for menu image like "menu image".
b. go to admin->category Now upload images in menu image as per your requirements.
c. You can get that image in your menu phtml file ex: <?php $category->getMenuImage() ?>
d. You need to customize html to set image above your menu. Design menu like https://snag.gy/iUE8uK.jpg.
e. Now you can add that image anywhere in menu but you need to customize your code and html.
I hope this will help.


Proving #P-hardness for the number of subsets of a set of positive integers with a sum of at most T?

Question: Consider the given problem: you have a set S of positive integers, and you want to find how many subsets have a sum of at most T. I highly suspect that the problem is hard since a polynomial time algorithm for the problem would give a polynomial time algorithm for #Subset-Sum. I have tried reducing from #Subset-Sum, but unsuccessfully. The main difficulty I face is linking the number of subsets and the maximum sum such that the resulting number of subsets can be expressed by an algebraic expression following the reduction. Is it possible to prove #P-hardness under many-one counting reductions?
Comment: Can you define exactly what you mean by "#Subset-Sum"? There are a few different variants of the Subset-Sum problem, which lead to different counting versions. Also, what type of reduction are you looking for (Turing, Many-one, deterministic, randomized,...)? For Turing reductions, I think it is easy, but the way you ask the question makes me think you are looking for a many-one counting reduction.
Comment: @Tassle Sorry for the lack of detail. I define #Subset-Sum as counting the number of subsets of a set S that have a sum of exactly T and I was looking for a many-one reduction (given a hypothetical algorithm and a reduced instance, counting solutions in the reduced instance would also allow counting solutions in the original instance in one algorithm call). I reduced from 3-SAT to Subset-Sum parsimoniously to put some restrictions on the set and the sum T, however, I think that it's a dead end because I wasn't able to find an expression for the number of subsets with a sum less than T.
Answer: The problem you are asking about is #P-hard. Thanks to Stefan Mengel who gave me the arguments and gave me permission to post them here.
There are two points to the hardness proof (and two variants of the second point).

Point 1: The problem, given a set $S$ of positive integers and a target $T$, of counting how many subsets of $S$ sum up to exactly $T$, is #P-hard. The rest of the answer clarifies this.
Point 2: The problem of summing to exactly $T$ reduces to your problem of summing to at most $T$.

Proof of point 1
The #P-hardness of the "exactly $T$" problem is claimed in this article, page 4, where they say it directly follows from the NP-hardness of SUBSET-SUM.
Looking into it, the hardness proof they adapt (Theorem 34.15 of Introduction to algorithms) is a reduction from 3-CNF-SAT. Informally, you write numbers in base 10, and you code every literal as an element of the set $S$ with a $1$ in a variable-specific position, and a $1$ at the positions corresponding to clauses satisfied by the literal. The target $T$ has $1$ at all variable-specific positions, ensuring that subsets of $S$ summing to $T$ must take for each variable exactly one element of $S$ corresponding to a literal of that variable. Further, $S$ contains for every clause two "slack elements", one with value 1 at the position corresponding to the clause, and one with value 2. The target $T$ asserts that the position of each clause contains 4. Hence, a subset of $S$ summing to $T$ must take at least one literal satisfying every clause (to get to 4), and then the choice of the slack elements (to complete to 4) is determined by the choice of variables.
So indeed I agree with them that this reduction is parsimonious, i.e., there is a bijection between the satisfying assignments of the input 3-CNF-SAT instance and the subsets of $S$ summing to $T$. As counting the satisfying elements is #P-hard, so is the "exactly $T$" problem. And so is your problem, as explained in the beginning of this post.
Proof of point 2
There are two variants to show this point. The first variant, point 2a below, is a simple argument but uses two oracle calls. The second variant, point 2b, shows the same thing but using only one oracle call.
Proof of point 2a
Given an instance $S$ and $T$, to count how many subsets sum up to exactly $T$, you can just use the oracle to your problem twice to find the number $N$ of subsets that sum up to at most $T$, and the number $N'$ of subsets that sum up to at most $T-1$. Then you can compute the value $N-N'$ which is the number of subsets summing to exactly $T$, the answer to the source problem.
Proof of point 2b
Here is an alternative proof of the reduction from the problem of point 1, which uses just one oracle call.
We want to know the number $K$ of subsets of $S$ that sum up to exactly $T$. Let $N = |S|$ be the number of sets in $S$. Let $S''$ be the set of $N+1$ singleton sets defined as $S'' = \{\{1\}, \ldots, \{N+1\}\}$. Let $M = (N+1)(N+2)/2 + 1$ be a value greater than the sum of all integers of all sets in $S''$: note that $M$ is polynomial. Let $MS$ be obtained from $S$ by multiplying all integers by $M$, i.e., let $MU$ for a set of integers be $\{Mx \mid x \in U\}$, and let $MS = \{MU \mid U \in S\}$.
Now let $S' = MS \cup S''$, which is a disjoint union because the sets of $S''$ contain integers less than $M$ and those of $MS$ contain positive integers no smaller than $M$. Let $T' = MT$. Call the oracle for OP's "at least" problem on $S'$ and $T'$. Now, the answer $K'$ to the oracle call, giving the number of subsets of $S'$ summing to at most $T'$, is the sum of two types of solutions:

Type 1: take sets of $MS$ summing to exactly $MT$, and take no set of $S'$: as everything has been multiplied by $M$ we see that the number of solutions of type 1 is exactly the value $K$ that we wanted to compute.
Type 2: take sets of $MS$ summing to strictly less than $MT$, and independently take any combination of sets of $S''$ (they all sum to less than $M$), i.e., $2^{N+1}$ combinations: call $K'$ this number of solutions of type 2, which is a multiple of $2^{N+1}$.

The oracle call has returned $K'' = K + K'$. Now, we know that $K'$ is a multiple of $2^{N+1}$, and know that $K \leq 2^N$, so we have $K = K'' \text{ mod } 2^{N+1}$. This explains how to recover the value $K$ that we wanted to compute from the oracle answer $K'$.
The point of this reduction is that it uses only one oracle call (but post-processes the answer).
Comment: That's not a many-one counting reduction though, so this only proves #P hardness under Turing reductions (in fact this exact reduction is why I asked OP if he insisted on many-one counting reductions)
Comment: Thanks a lot for your insightful answer and article! That's what I tried too, the problem I see with that approach is that the reduction disregards the number of subsets that have a sum less than T. In fact, the decision problem: does this set of positive integers have a subset with a sum of at most T is in P(the empty set has a sum of zero so if T < 0 answer False, otherwise, True). Notice that if a parsimonious reduction exists between any NP-Hard problem and the aforementioned problem, then P = NP since the counting version has an FPTAS( see [link](https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.05791) ).
Comment: @DanielGarcía: oh, I see, sorry that I misread your question. Indeed, that's a problem -- the number of subsets with sum at most T in the answer is the number of Boolean assignments but weighted in a strange way (depending on how many true literals there are in the various clauses). I'd have to think more, sorry...
Comment: No worries, like I said it was the most natural way to go. I have a lower bound for the number of subsets with a sum over T following the reduction, it's 2^(n-2) (n is the number of integers in the set). That's because summing the two largest elements from the set gives you a sum of 200... which is greater than the target sum, you then can use any combination of the remaining elements to get a greater sum. However, it's just a lower bound and doesn't help much for our problem, since it over-counts the number of subsets with a sum less than T.
Comment: @DanielGarcía: my collaborator Stefan pointed out there is an immediate reduction from "exactly $T$" to "at most $T$", so your problem is hard as well. I updated my answer to reflect it. I hope this helps!
Comment: Thanks a lot for your insightful and simple answer!
Comment: @a3nm: Tassle has a good point, my apologies for not modifying the original post. Do you mind modifying your original answer to reflect the fact that the oracle is used once?
Comment: @DanielGarcía: Sure, I have moved my comments to the answer itself (and deleted the comments)
Answer: Just to add to the answer of a3nm:
The problem is also known as #Knapsack, which is the counting version of the knapsack problem. The constraint that the sum of the selected numbers needs to be smaller than $T$ is a knapsack constraint.
 This problem is discussed in "Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-completeness" by Garey and Johnson.
This term is used, for instances, in this article of Gopalan et al. (2011).
The problem is also discussed in this article by Dyer et al. (1993) however, there the term "#Knapsack" is not used explicitly.
Unfortunately I am not aware of the first article that used the term "#Knapsack" nor the original source that proved that this problem is #P-complete.
Comment: Is it called #Knapsack in Garey and Johnson? To me, it seems to be the Kth Largest Subset Problem defined in Chapter 5.1.
Comment: Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer).


How can I take more control in ASP.NET?

Question: I'm trying to build a very, very simple "micro-webapp" which I suspect will be of interest to a few Stack Overflow'rs if I ever get it done. I'm hosting it on my C# in Depth site, which is vanilla ASP.NET 3.5 (i.e. not MVC).
The flow is very simple:

If a user enters the app with a URL which doesn't specify all the parameters (or if any of them are invalid) I want to just display the user input controls. (There are only two.)
If a user enters the app with a URL which does have all the required parameters, I want to display the results and the input controls (so they can change the parameters)

Here are my self-imposed requirements (mixture of design and implementation):

I want the submission to use GET rather than POST, mostly so users can bookmark the page easily.
I don't want the URL to end up looking silly after submission, with extraneous bits and pieces on it. Just the main URL and the real parameters please.
Ideally I'd like to avoid requiring JavaScript at all. There's no good reason for it in this app.
I want to be able to access the controls during render time and set values etc. In particular, I want to be able to set the default values of the controls to the parameter values passed in, if ASP.NET can't do this automatically for me (within the other restrictions).
I'm happy to do all the parameter validation myself, and I don't need much in the way of server side events. It's really simple to set everything on page load instead of attaching events to buttons etc.

Most of this is okay, but I haven't found any way of completely removing the viewstate and keeping the rest of the useful functionality. Using the post from this blog post I've managed to avoid getting any actual value for the viewstate - but it still ends up as a parameter on the URL, which looks really ugly.
If I make it a plain HTML form instead of an ASP.NET form (i.e. take out runat="server") then I don't get any magic viewstate - but then I can't access the controls programmatically.
I could do all of this by ignoring most of ASP.NET and building up an XML document with LINQ to XML, and implementing IHttpHandler. That feels a bit low level though.
I realise that my problems could be solved by either relaxing my constraints (e.g. using POST and not caring about the surplus parameter) or by using ASP.NET MVC, but are my requirements really unreasonable?
Maybe ASP.NET just doesn't scale down to this sort of app? There's a very likely alternative though: I'm just being stupid, and there's a perfectly simple way of doing it that I just haven't found.
Any thoughts, anyone? (Cue comments of how the mighty are fallen, etc. That's fine - I hope I've never claimed to be an ASP.NET expert, as the truth is quite the opposite...)
Comment: Yes, it's due out in 2025 ;)
Comment: "Cue comments of how the mighty are fallen" - we're all ignorant, just of different things.   I'm only recently started participating here, but I admire the question more than all the points.  You're obviously still thinking and learning.  Kudos to you.
Comment: I don't think I'd ever pay attention to someone who'd given up learning :)
Comment: And will your next book be "ASP.NET in Depth"? :-P
Comment: True in general case. Very true in computer science.
Comment: @GK: Don't use my name here, you are removing an important link as context. I have never done this.
Comment: This is awesome by the way.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/JonSkeetCodingBlog/~3/513263291/stack-overflow-reputation-tool-now-online.aspx
Answer: This solution will give you programmatic access to the controls in their entirety including all attributes on the controls. Also, only the text box values will appear in the URL upon submission so your GET request URL will be more "meaningful"
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="JonSkeetForm.aspx.cs" Inherits="JonSkeetForm" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

    <title>Jon Skeet's Form Page</title>

    <form action="JonSkeetForm.aspx" method="get">

        <input type="text" ID="text1" runat="server" />
        <input type="text" ID="text2" runat="server" />
        <button type="submit">Submit</button>
        <asp:Repeater ID="Repeater1" runat="server">
            <ItemTemplate>

Some text

            </ItemTemplate>
        </asp:Repeater>

    </form>

Then in your code-behind you can do everything you need on PageLoad
public partial class JonSkeetForm : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        text1.Value = Request.QueryString[text1.ClientID];
        text2.Value = Request.QueryString[text2.ClientID];
    }
}

If you don't want a form that has runat="server", then you should use HTML controls. It's easier to work with for your purposes. Just use regular HTML tags and put runat="server" and give them an ID. Then you can access them programmatically and code without a ViewState.
The only downside is that you won't have access to many of the "helpful" ASP.NET server controls like GridViews. I included a Repeater in my example because I'm assuming that you want to have the fields on the same page as the results and (to my knowledge) a Repeater is the only DataBound control that will run without a runat="server" attribute in the Form tag.
Comment: Looks like you should have just written it in classic asp!
Comment: I've got so few fields that doing it manually is really easy :) The key was that I didn't know I could use runat=server with normal HTML controls. I haven't implemented the results yet, but that's the easy bit. Nearly there!
Comment: No need for rewriting. This answer works fine (although it does mean having a control with an ID of "user" - for some reason I can't change the name of a textbox control separately from its ID).
Comment: Just to confirm, this worked very well indeed. Thanks very much!
Comment: Indeed, a  would add the __VIEWSTATE (and some other) hidden field even when you set EnableViewState="False" at page level. This is the way to go if you want to loose the ViewState on the page. As for Url friendliness, urlrewriting might be an option.
Comment: Will this work if you are using master pages? The clientId of the controls usually change when using master pages.
Comment: This will work in Master Pages, you just have to use the ClientID property of your text boxes instead of hard-coding IDs into the Query String lookup.
Answer: You're definitely (IMHO) on the right track by not using runat="server" in your FORM tag. This just means you'll need to extract values from the Request.QueryString directly, though, as in this example:
In the .aspx page itself:
<%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true"
     CodeFile="FormPage.aspx.cs" Inherits="FormPage" %>

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

  <title>ASP.NET with GET requests and no viewstate</title>

    <asp:Panel ID="ResultsPanel" runat="server">

Results:

      <asp:Literal ID="ResultLiteral" runat="server" />

    </asp:Panel>

Parameters

    <form action="FormPage.aspx" method="get">

      Parameter 1:
    <input type="text" name="param1" id="param1TextBox" value='<asp:Literal id="Param1ValueLiteral" runat="server" />'/>

      Parameter 2:
    <input type="text" name="param2" id="param2TextBox"  value='<asp:Literal id="Param2ValueLiteral" runat="server" />'/>
    <input type="submit" name="verb" value="Submit" />
    </form>

and in the code-behind:
using System;

public partial class FormPage : System.Web.UI.Page {

        private string param1;
        private string param2;

        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {

            param1 = Request.QueryString["param1"];
            param2 = Request.QueryString["param2"];

            string result = GetResult(param1, param2);
            ResultsPanel.Visible = (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(result));

            Param1ValueLiteral.Text = Server.HtmlEncode(param1);
            Param2ValueLiteral.Text = Server.HtmlEncode(param2);
            ResultLiteral.Text = Server.HtmlEncode(result);
        }

        // Do something with parameters and return some result.
        private string GetResult(string param1, string param2) {
            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(param1) && String.IsNullOrEmpty(param2)) return(String.Empty);
            return (String.Format("You supplied {0} and {1}", param1, param2));
        }
    }

The trick here is that we're using ASP.NET Literals inside the value="" attributes of the text inputs, so the text-boxes themselves don't have to runat="server". The results are then wrapped inside an ASP:Panel, and the Visible property set on page load depending whether you want to display any results or not.
Comment: The URLs will be pretty friendly, I think... This looks like a really good solution.
Comment: It works pretty well, but the URLs will not be as friendly as, say, StackOverflow.
Comment: Argh, I read your tweets earlier, had researched it, and now I missed your question preparing my ittle kids for the bathtub... :-)
Answer: Okay Jon, the viewstate issue first:
I haven't checked if there's any kind of internal code change since 2.0 but here's how I handled getting rid of the viewstate a few years ago. Actually that hidden field is hardcoded inside HtmlForm so you should derive your new one and step into its rendering making the calls by yourself. Note that you can also leave __eventtarget and __eventtarget out if you stick to plain old input controls (which I guess you'd want to since it also helps not requiring JS on the client):
protected override void RenderChildren(System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter writer)
{
    System.Web.UI.Page page = this.Page;
    if (page != null)
    {
        onFormRender.Invoke(page, null);
        writer.Write("
<input type=\"hidden\" name=\"__eventtarget\" id=\"__eventtarget\" value=\"\" /><input type=\"hidden\" name=\"__eventargument\" id=\"__eventargument\" value=\"\" />
");
    }

    ICollection controls = (this.Controls as ICollection);
    renderChildrenInternal.Invoke(this, new object[] {writer, controls});

    if (page != null)
        onFormPostRender.Invoke(page, null);
}

So you get those 3 static MethodInfo's and call them out skipping that viewstate part out ;)
static MethodInfo onFormRender;
static MethodInfo renderChildrenInternal;
static MethodInfo onFormPostRender;

and here's your form's type constructor:
static Form()
{
    Type aspNetPageType = typeof(System.Web.UI.Page);

    onFormRender = aspNetPageType.GetMethod("OnFormRender", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
    renderChildrenInternal = typeof(System.Web.UI.Control).GetMethod("RenderChildrenInternal", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
    onFormPostRender = aspNetPageType.GetMethod("OnFormPostRender", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
}

If I'm getting your question right, you also want not to use POST as the action of your forms so here's how you'd do that:
protected override void RenderAttributes(System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter writer)
{
    writer.WriteAttribute("method", "get");
    base.Attributes.Remove("method");

    // the rest of it...
}

I guess this is pretty much it. Let me know how it goes.
EDIT: I forgot the Page viewstate methods:
So your custom Form : HtmlForm gets its brand new abstract (or not) Page : System.Web.UI.Page :P
protected override sealed object SaveViewState()
{
    return null;
}

protected override sealed void SavePageStateToPersistenceMedium(object state)
{
}

protected override sealed void LoadViewState(object savedState)
{
}

protected override sealed object LoadPageStateFromPersistenceMedium()
{
    return null;
}

In this case I seal the methods 'cause you can't seal the Page (even if it isn't abstract Scott Guthrie will wrap it into yet another one :P) but you can seal your Form.
Comment: Thanks for this - although it sounds like rather a lot of work. Dan's solution worked fine for me, but it's always good to have more options.
Answer: Have you thought about not eliminating the POST but rather redirecting to a suitable GET url when the form is POSTed.   That is, accept both GET and POST, but on POST construct a GET request and redirect to it.  This could be handled either on the page or via an HttpModule if you wanted to make it page-independent. I think this would make things much easier.
EDIT: I assume that you have EnableViewState="false" set on the page.
Comment: Nice idea. Well, horrible idea in terms of being forced to do it, but nice in terms of it probably working :) Will try...
Comment: And yes, I've tried EnableViewState=false all over the place. It doesn't completely disable it, just cuts it down.
Comment: Jon: If you don't use the damned server controls (no runat="server") and you don't have a  at all, ViewState will not be a trouble. That's why I said not to use server controls. You can always use Request.Form collection.
Comment: But without runat=server on the controls, it's a pain to propagate the value to the controls again when rendering. Fortunately, HTML controls with runat=server work well.
Answer: I would create an HTTP module that handles routing (similar to MVC but not sophisticated, just a couple if statements) and hand it to aspx or ashx pages. aspx is preferred since it's easier to modify the page template. I wouldn't use WebControls in the aspx however. Just Response.Write.
By the way, to simplify things, you can do parameter validation in the module (as it shares code with routing probably) and save it to HttpContext.Items and then render them in the page. This will work pretty much like the MVC without all the bell and whistles. This is what I did a lot before ASP.NET MVC days.
Answer: I've really been happy to totally abandon the page class altogether and just handler every request with a big switch case based on url. Evey "page" becomes a html template and a c# object. The template class uses a regex with a match delegate that compares against a key collection.
benefits:

It's really fast, even after a recompile, there is almost no lag (the page class must be big)
control is really granular (great for SEO, and crafting the DOM to play well with JS)
the presentation is separate from logic
jQuery has total control of the html

bummers:

simple stuff takes a bit longer in
that a single text box requires code
in several places, but it does scale
up really well
it's always tempting to just do it with page view until i see a
viewstate (urgh) then i snap back to
reality.

Jon, what are we doing on SO on a Saturday morning:) ?
Comment: It's Saturday evening here. Does that make it okay? (I'd love to see a scatter graph of my posting times/days, btw...)
Answer: I thought the asp:Repeater control was obsolete.
The ASP.NET template engine is nice but you can just as easily accomplish repeating with a for loop...
<form action="JonSkeetForm.aspx" method="get">

    <input type="text" ID="text1" runat="server" />
    <input type="text" ID="text2" runat="server" />
    <button type="submit">Submit</button>
    <% foreach( var item in dataSource ) { %>

Some text

    <% } %>

</form>

ASP.NET Forms is sort of okay, there's decent support from Visual Studio but this runat="server" thing, that's just wrong. ViewState to.
I suggest you take a look at what makes ASP.NET MVC so great, who it moves away from the ASP.NET Forms approach without throwing it all away.
You can even write your own build provider stuff to compile custom views like NHaml. I think you should look here for more control and simply relying on the ASP.NET runtime for wrapping HTTP and as a CLR hosting environment. If you run integrated mode then you'll be able to manipulate the HTTP request/response as well.

How can I take more control in ASP.NET?


Custom STM8L dev board not working

Question: I designed a dev board for the STM8L151F2, and even using an external programmer and external power the STM8 has only been able to be programmed twice. Here's the schematic, everything done in eagle.  I've gone over every pin with a multimeter, nothing is bridged and everything is connected to the correct pin. The STM8 is in the right orientation. With the CP2102 it was recognized as a USB device, though never has allowed me to interact with the STM8. Am I making some rookie mistake? All the pins are connected as per the TAC and datasheets descriptions AFAIK
Comment: Which external programmer are you using? The STLinkv2?
Comment: @Tri, as sealj553 said in the answers, we've tried trouble shooting in a variety of  ways, it seems to be something specific to the hardware.
Answer: @Tri
(Don't have enough rep to comment) I'm working with OP on this. We tried with an official STLinkV2 and some clones, using stm8flash on Linux (and also tried STVP). stm8flash times out, and it appears to not be able to communicate with the STM8L.
I was able to program the MCU on two occasions, and I was able to read the test serial output with a FT232RL (not from the CP2102 though). It seemed like the MCU was intermittently resetting, then I was no longer to program it. Since then, I have not had success with the other 4 test boards we have assembled.
I believe we ruled out power supply ripple as a problem, as we tried powering the MCU with the CP2102's internal LDO, the STLink's 3.3v, and a programmable bench PSU. I also have an STM8L-DISCOVERY board, and the code is working fine, so that eliminates the possibility of accidental software resets/pin remaps/bad fuse settings.

Custom STM8L dev board not working


how do i find the number of possible keys / password to decrypt a plain text

Question: I would like to know if there is any way to recover the plain-text of a message that's been encrypted with 55 rounds of the Caesar cipher, with a different (independently chosen) key for each round; I must use a brute-force attack, and do not know the length of the keys or characters used.
Comment: Sure, you brute-force the keys and character lengths. Is this a homework question? This is an awfully specific and arbitrary scenario.
Comment: If you know it's a caesar cipher, then the key "length" [is only about `4.6` bits](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=log2%2825%29). To brute-force it, you merely have to combine that fact with the knowledge that **iterating Caesar ciphers is identical to only changing the key** — it increases the key strength by [about 0.05 bits the first time](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=log2%2826%29+-+log2%2825%29), and none thereafter.
Answer: An encrypted plain-text is a cipher-text. A Plain-text - like its name says - is an unencrypted text.
The Caesar cipher is a simple encryption in which every plain-text letter of a given string is shifted by a given key.
Like schroeder said, your question looks awfully specific and it seems to be a homework question.
Anyway: If you rotate a given string 55 rounds with a different key (e.g. 1-26 for the latin character set), at the end there is only one single key to decrypt the whole cipher-text to a meaningful plain-text which doesn't looks like garbage. That is simply because the function is nothing less or more than:
encrypt(encrypt(encrypt(encrypt(string,key1), key2), key3), keyx)

The algorithm uses the output of the first round as input for the second round and so on.
If one knows the cipher-text and the plain-text he doesn't need to reproduce all X rounds. He simply is able to figure out one key from cipher-text to plain-text.
If one only knows the cipher-text, a analysis of the quantity of every letter in the alphabet in known words would help to guess this one key.
A simple explanation of this you can find here:
Cracking a Caesar-Cipher
I hope, that this "answer" helps you to put a little bit effort in solving your specific 55-Round encryption problem.
Answer:
how do i find the number of possible keys … without knowing the length of the keys

As-stated, this question is impossible to answer: the number of possible keys is 2n, where n is the length (in bits) of the key.
…however, that's only the case for "real" ciphers. In this case, if you'd checked Wikipedia before posting, you'd see that there are just 25 possible keys for a Caesar cipher (this corresponds to a 4-to-5-bit key).

But, to dig more into the context of your question:
Chaining ciphers with independently-chosen keys essentially adds the lengths of the keys to get the composite key length of the resulting cipher. In theory, 55 such cycles of a cipher with 25 possible keys would yield a final key strength of just shy of 256 bits. (Again according to Wikipedia, this is probably safe given that "in order to simply flip through the possible values for a 128-bit symmetric key … would, theoretically, require… [by] the Von Neumann-Landauer Limit[,] … about 0.1% of the yearly world energy production"; a 256-bit key takes about 3.4×1038 times as many resources as that.)

However, the above all assumes the attacker does not have any cryptanalytic attacks on the cipher.
We can perform an extremely easy killer cryptanalysis on this supposedly 255-bit cipher to reduce it to a single Caesar cipher:

Consider the fact that caesar_m chained with caesar_n yields caesar_(n+m mod 26).
Repeat (1) until the number of cycles the cipher has is reduced to 1.

(This is in addition to some other cryptanalytic failures it's got; but this is the most important one to exploit in this case, so I'll only go into it.)
So you only have to try "all" 26 caesar ciphers (the 26th possibility, of a null cipher, can emerge from combining, say, a +20 and a +6 shift); people across the country crack a 600 sextillion times harder cipher with breakfast every morning. You should be able to brute-force it by hand in a few minutes by attempting to decrypt just the first handful of letters and checking if the resulting text is valid language.
Answer: In does not matter how many rounds of caesar cipher you use, effectively it still becomes one single round with key (k1+k2+k3 ....kn) mod a, where a is the number of alphabets, 26 in English alphabet. So, you only need 26 attempts to break it.


Stumped in Volkrund Keep

Question: In Volkrund Keep I got the door open. We went down the hall and turned left down some stairs. Here is the problem: the room at the bottom has furniture all over, some floating in air. It was strange, but ok, I thought. Down another hall with cells on either side. I turn right and there is another large room with spider web guarding it so you cannot get thru. How to get thru and does anyone else have this problem?
Comment: What is the full quest name for this?
Answer: These areas are easily accessed when following Brother Arnand from  Bailun Priory during his quest "Dreams in Oblivion".
Comment: Brother Armand is at the priory and he will not even talk to me, much less go to Voolkrund

Stumped in Volkrund Keep


When the child shall play at the hole of the asp, will it be newly created or re-created?

Question: The Bible tells us that the elements will melt to form the renewed earth. Since neither the physical world, nor this world's animals + plants can apprehend the Good News, but the eath is to be renewed, why would the animals and plants not be renewed? The verse that comes to mind is the one where "the lion will lie down with the lamb, and the child will play at the hole of the asp". So there will be animals in the renewed earth~  ~so my question is will we have this world's animals living in the new earth or will God create different animals?   ((and where would this world's animals go to, in either case, when we enter the renewed world?))
Comment: It is clear enough to me. The Bible appears to say that the earth as we know it now will disappear or, more literally, "the elements being intensely hot will be dissolved" (2 Peter 3:10). Animals could not survive in such conditions, and yet the Bible also says that known animals will be living in peace with each other and people, which would imply that animals will appear again at some point. Question is, how is that supposed to happen?
Comment: I'm voting to close this question because it is incoherent.  Please review [this guidance](https://christianity.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask) and make your question clear.
Answer: I think that this short explanation puts things in a whole new perspective: https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/earth-destroyed/
It also answers the question "Doesn't the Bible teach that the earth will be burned in fire?"
The explanation does take some terms figuratively, so how can that be justified? Sometimes the context will show that a literal meaning doesn't fit. For example, where Noah by his faith "condemned the world" (Hebrews 11:7) and everyone who "wants to be a friend of the world is making himself an enemy of God (James 4:4).  Sometimes, the Bible gives a literal explanation. In Daniel 2:35,44-45 God's Kingdom is represented by a mountain. Therefore, you can take that sometimes, a "mountain" can mean "God's Kingdom", which is a specially arranged government as you'll see in those verses, that is in opposition to governments of this world, as explained through the dream.
It seems sensible, then, to conclude that the animals we know now will be there, because the destruction of the earth as Peter mentions it, is not aimed at the animals, but at the worldwide human society (see article). There may be a re-creation of animals that have gone extinct due to mankind's mismanagement of the earth, but the details will probably reveal themselves as and when that time comes.
Comment: There is almost no indication given in the bible of the physical state beyond the return of the Lord. Jesus says in the resurrection they shall neither marry nor be given in marriage but be as the angels of God, but I cannot see any grounds for being specific about anything else, myself. 'It seems sensible to conclude' is an opinion of your own and 'there may be' has no certainty. Your link does not actually cover the question in point.
Comment: Mind that Jesus was replying to "Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection" (Matthew 22:23). There, Jesus first pointed out that they "know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God". It makes all the difference whether or not the environment in which animals can survive will continue or stop to exist at some point. Final paragraph is not opinion, but a conclusion that perhaps should be supported by further arguments and Scriptural evidence, such as God's purpose for the earth and the futility of resistance against what he has determined to do (Genesis 1:28; Job 23:13; Proverbs 21:30).
Comment: It may be that what is to come cannot be conveyed. Eye hath not see nor ear heard nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what God hath laid up for them that wait for him/love him. (NT/OT). Isaiah 11:6 is maybe the clearest image given, but is it to be seen physically ? It was a good question. I might re-ask it in Biblical Hermeneutics. (+1)


Content Organizer Permissions

Question: When using the content organizer in SharePoint 2010, do users need to have contributor permissions in the destination document library, or just to the Drop Off Library?
Answer: Apparently I just needed to go one more page on the Bing search results :)
The answer is here: http://www.scottjamison.com/blog/2010/11/the-sharepoint-2010-content-organizer/

Two of the questions I get regularly
  on the content organizer:

Does a user need write permissions on the destination location?
  Answer: Actually, no! The content
  organizer will move the content to
  the new location whether or not the
  contributing user has access to the
  destination location.
What account is used for the "Modified By" property on the
  destination document? Answer: The
  system will retain the original
  contributor. (The system does not
  mark the document as updated by
  'system' or 'admin' or anything like
  that.)
This is an interesting situation —
  it means that users can effectively
  add content into a place where they
  technically don't have permissions.
  Not directly, mind you. But in effect.

Content Organizer Permissions


What kinds of misc (implement, ki focus, that sort of thing) items can a swordmage equip?

Question: I am playing a swordmage, and have 620 gp. My DM decided to open the shop so that we can buy some items with our cash. I don't know what I can actually use though.
Comment: Okay, are you asking what gear is appropriate for a swordmage? Or are you asking what implements he can use? What level are you, what's your build, what's "tons?" and are there any other limitations on purchasing other than price?
Comment: @Brian    I'm asking what gear is appropriate, yes.    I'm level 4 and have 620gp (our dm isn't terribly giving, that's my savings from the entire time from level 1-4)   The only limitation is "no mounts"
Comment: That was fast. Okay, 620 gp... changes things. What feats do you have? How many close burst powers, how many melee powers? What is your aegis?
Answer: An abstract answer can be found here in the equipment recommendations. Swordmages, by default, can only use heavy blades as implements. Happily, there are a fair number of heavy blades designed for swordmages. My favourite would be Gith Silver, simply because I like psychic lock. A -2 on top of a -2 from marks for one nasty defender. It keeps you alive longer as well.
Reach extenders are cute, especially with an item set devoted to it (Arcane Bonds) but require specialized builds. Swordmages are hurting for damage, and if you're a melee-focused build IAoP are pretty critical. "Rhythm Blade Wrist Razors (AV2/DSCS, lvl. 3) - This is a very nice way to get the benefit of the Rhythm Blade (+1 AC/Ref) without losing the +3 bonus to AC from your warding."
Edit
With 620 gp, you can afford a level 1 or level 2 item. If you don't have a +1 weapon, buy a Magic +1 weapon. If you don't have +1 Armor, buy +1 Armor, and if you don't have +1 neck, buy a +1 neck. Level 2 items are just not that impressive and burning the rest on a couple of healing potions is very much worth it.
If you find yourself doing the defender-dance (prone every other turn) a pair of acrobat boots isn't bad, but only if you have +1 in your 3 primary slots.
Edit:
To answer the question of the title: Most of them. Just like every other character, you have: head, arms(bracers, since shields break your warding), neck, armor, feet, ring, ring, ki-focus (not used), holy symbol (not used), Tattoo (look at level 3), Boon (kinda not really slotted, but I've never heard of someone having more than one), Waist, and other. There are entirely too many items out there. My personal recommendation is to ask your DM to go to intrinsic bonuses and item rarity, simply to cut down on the stupid numbers of items you'll want to choose from. While this is less critical at low levels, high level item selection is just not fun for anyone (that I've heard).
Comment: Okay, thank you.      I know 620 isn't "alot" but that was literally all we got in a whole campaign.     I shall go for the armor.
Comment: Cool. It's a decent investment for a defender.


In Rimworld, will a fire always destroy your base? Or is there some better way to put fires out in the game?

Question: I have been playing the game quite a bit lately and every new colony I create basically ends due to an out of control fire. Is there any way to prevent this or at least an effective means of putting the fires out?
Comment: What causes the most fires in the first place ?
Comment: Where do you put your base? I've found that the vast majority of (larger) fires in my games are put out by rain. Exploding batteries or small Boomrat fires are fairly easy to just put out with your crew.
Comment: My fires start for various reasons it seems, some of them I've learned to deal with, like mental breaks, batteries exploding, but some like lightning just can't reasonably be dealt with.
Comment: OK then, see my EDIT on lightning (most of the time, you *can* deal with them \o/)
Answer:
Always set firefighting to priority 1.

Edit your home area to cover everything you want to protect; your colonists won't fight fires outside this area.

Build stone walls (I used granite, use whatever is most available and not flammable) all around your base. Steel walls burn.

Add a several meters layer of stone floor around your wall can help too.

Kill boomrats (and boomalopes) when it's raining. Kill 'em all.

Don't rely too much on batteries, the more you have, the biggest explosion/fire it creates.

Firefoam poppers are great too, but costly and need some advanced research. I didn't bother to much with it (except in my boomrat farm of firedeath, for obvious security reasons), the above tips should largely suffice.

Now, depending on the source of your fires, some more techniques can be useful. So what causes fires in the first place ?
--
EDIT : So, it looks like lightning is your main source of fire.
Lightning mostly occurs when it's raining, but sometimes the rain stops a bit early. You can even have dry thunderstorms, and these are a real pain. For the latter, these is not much to do, and the best defense are stone walls (but expect to lose some vegetation around).
However, when you have only one fire still going on after the rain stops, you can deal with it : just follow rule 1 and 2, and expand temporarily your home area on and around the fire. Then select all of your colonists and draft then undraft them to make them stop immediately their job. If you don't, some may finish what they were doing instead of putting out the fire.
Comment: Both answers here are great. I'd like to add to this one that you can use batteries as long as you don't have any full batteries connected to the network when there is no load on them. My solution is to have several stacks of batteries separated from the net by switches such that I can add a few of them to the network at a time, when needed. This has prevented many a Bzzzzt event for me, and any that happened were smaller due to less batteries being connected.
Comment: There is no noob-ish questions... well... there is, but not this one
Comment: Thanks, great answer. Sorry if my question was noob-ish.
Answer: Absolutely.
You have a few options so I'll list them in the order that I think is most effective.

If you look in the menu, you should see a zone option, this is usually where you go to create growing areas. There is a zone type in there called "home area". If you click on it you can see your current home area, this area basically specifies the area that you consider your home, as such any cleaning/repairs and fires in this area will be put out. I would recommend putting a home area a few blocks further than your walls to prevent structural damage. The catch with this is only people assigned to the firefighting role in jobs will actually put out fires. Wiki
Place a ring of non-burnable flooring around your base. This prevents fires from spreading far enough to cause you damage, fires can spread with any grass/plants but can't burn stone. This is arguably the best method but it can be time consuming and resource intensive.
Using firefoam poppers. These are research unlocked devices that explode when fire touches them, instead of causing further damage it sends out a decent sized circle of foam which instantly puts out fires and prevents more fire from entering those tiles. Wiki

I forgot to mention, you're not barred from using all 3 of the methods described above, if you want to 99% safe then you can implement all 3.
Comment: No prob. If you look at the change I made the problem strangely seemed to be that a space before the *first* one was causing the others to be indented. I don't pretend to understand why but some playing around got it looking better so I stopped worrying about the why. :)


Glider Flying Handbook page 5-6 error on effects of weight to stall speed?

Question: I've been reading the FAA's Glider Flying Handbook, 2013 (FAA-H-8083-13A). Page 5-6 in chapter 5 states the following, but it doesn't seem right to me.

The heavy glider has a higher stall speed and a higher minimum
controllable airspeed than an otherwise identical, but lighter,
glider. The stall speed of a glider increases with the square root of
the increase in weight. If the weight of the glider is doubled
(multiplied by 2.0), then the stall speed increases by more than 40
percent (1.41 is the approximate square root of 2; 1.41 times the old
stall speed results in the new stall speed at the heavier weight). For
example, a 540-pound glider has a stalling speed of 40 knots. The
pilot adds 300 pounds of water ballast making the new weight 840
pounds. The new stalling speed is approximately 57 knots (square root
of √ 300 + 40 = 57).

Increase of stall speed is not proportional to the square root of the raw increase in weight, it's proportional to the square root of the percentage change in weight. So in this case, the new stall speed would be
= StallSpeed * sqrt(NewWeight / OriginalWeight)
= 40 * sqrt(840/540)
= ~49.9

Another way to see this is incorrect is to do what the example says at first and double the weight (540 * 2 = 1080), which should increase the stall speed by 40% to 56.4 knots. So surely only increasing the weight by 300 pounds doesn't have the same effect. And by the math at the end of the paragraph, sqrt(540) + 40 = 63.2 knots which is clearly not equal to 56.4 knots.
Am I correct in my thinking here, and there is an error in the handbook?
Answer: You are correct.
The handbook is correct in the earlier example -- double the weight, stall speed increases by $\sqrt{2}$.
You are correct in the final example.


Could a bank take out a loan from another bank?

Question: It costs a lot of money to start a bank from the ground up, for obvious reasons. To get this starting capital, unless the person starting the bank is already wealthy enough to pay for it themselves, banking start-ups presumably need either investors or loans. Could a banking start-up potentially secure loans from other, already established banking institutions, or would such existing banks refuse to lend to a potential competitor? Would it change anything if the start-up was very unlikely to become a competitor, either due to location or business model?
Comment: They can borrow from a central bank if that counts.
Answer: Probably not. A bank does not get started by "borrowing" money. The purpose of the bank is to lend that money out to borrowers at a higher interest rate than they pay on their funds. Paying loan interest to another bank would kill their profits and make it nearly impossible to pay off the loan. The interest income would probably not be enough to pay the loan interest and pay it down.
In reality, that is not how banks get started. Banks more typically get started with an initial set of capital investors, and over time, grow by increasing their deposits. The banks can then lend that money to borrowers, charging them more interest that what they pay on deposits (subject to regulations that dictate how much of the bank's deposits can be lent out).  Capital investors get "paid" by seeing their equity investment grow.
As they grow, if they need more capital becausue they've loaned out more than they are required to keep in deposits, then they can borrow money "overnight" from the Federal Reserve and pay a much smaller interest rate then they would get from a term loan from another bank.
That is a very simplistic view of the modern banking system, but hopefully it illustrates that they are not started via bank loans.
Comment: There is a lot wrong here. For purposes of capital sufficiency, loans and deposits count the same; they're both liabilities on the bank's balance sheet.  If a bank tried to grow solely by taking deposits, it would quickly find that in order to maintain its required capital ratios it would be limited to holding zero risk-weighted assets, which don't earn very much. Also, borrowing from the fed or anyone else can't get a bank more capital because such borrowings are matched by liabilities (therefore, no change in capital).
Comment: Like I said - it's a very simplistic view, but the core answer is that you probably can't start a bank (at least not successfully) by borrowing money from other banks.
Comment: I agree with that. The reason is that banking regulations require banks to have some of their own (i.e., their investors') money as a cushion, in case their assets incur losses.
Answer: It is quite common for banks to lend and borrow money from each other. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbank_lending_market . However, this borrowing is done to even out capital requirements, not to fund the core founding capital. Banks often start out with one branch with some seed equity capital, and then expand into more branches. As they expand, they get more deposits and can attract more equity investments, and this fuels further expansion. There is also a tendency for banks to merge. The huge banks you see are generally a result of this gradual expansion and mergers, not someone borrowing several billion dollars to start a nationwide bank.


In the ARINC specification, does "sig bits" include the sign bit?

Question: In the ARINC specification, there are sections where all of the different labels (and their pay-loads) are described. In each of the tables where the labels are defined, there is a column called sig bits. For where the labels are designated as BNR, do the sig bits include the sign bit?
Comment: What is missing in the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARINC_429#Word_format)? For BNR, the sign bit is bit 29 of the word.
Comment: Wikipedia's table for sign bit is the exact copy of the [original table](http://i.stack.imgur.com/Cbgm3.png) found in §22.214.171.124 *BNR Numeric Data Words* of [ARINC 429](https://www.scribd.com/doc/50093471/ARINC-429-16) documentation.
Answer: In A429 BNR words bit 29 is the sign bit.  Individual label descriptions are not entirely consistent in that many will identify bit 29 as part of the sig bits field.
In any case it's important to look at the details of a specific label, especially the range, MSB, and LSB values.  Some are always positive (such as airspeed) and so the sign bit is assumed to be positive and bit 29 can be the MSB.
One common factor is that the majority of BNR labels are coded in 2's-complement binary.  In this case, the MSB is half the range and each of the following bits is half the value of the previous. Example: For a "heading" range of 0 to 359, the MSB (bit 29) is 180, the next is 90, followed by 45, 22.5, 11.25, etc. Alternately, you can declare bit 29 the sign bit and the range becomes -180 to +179.
So you'll note that in 2's-complement encoding, it doesn't matter if you consider bit 29 as an MSB or a sign bit.  The difference is that if you call it MSB, the range is 0 to 359.  If you call it a sign bit, the range is -180 to +179.
You can prove this to yourself by declaring bit 29 as a sign bit and code -135 degrees.  Then declare bit 29 a MSB value of 180 and code 225 degrees. The coding should be the same.
Comment: I believe this explanation is valid for angular data (which is a special case described by the comment in § 2.1.6 of the standard), but not for linear data where the LSB is made equal to the resolution.


How to have Emacs daemon persist on remote

Question: My current work workflow includes using PuTTY to SSH into a Linux development box with many users. I use an Emacs daemon to avoid the long startup times when closing my Emacs sessions. However, the Emacs daemon dies upon ending my SSH session. I was wondering if there is a way to spawn the daemon such that it persists beyond closing the SSH session? The only solution I have seen thus far is to use Emacs inside Tmux, however I much prefer the GUI Emacs.
Comment: Any change, you're using Linux box with systemd-logind v230+, and you started emacs with emacs --daemon? You'll need to use systemd syntax to keep it running.
Comment: You should be able to run the Emacs daemon in `tmux` or `screen` as well.
Comment: You mean use the Emacs daemon in tmux but still use GUI Emacs?
Comment: Sure. Either this, or `nohup`/`disown`.
Comment: I have tried both nohup and disown unsuccessfully..
Answer: Fleshing out the suggestion of @Danh to use systemd
Simple solution
Recent emacs has improved it's support for emacs as a service.
This includes

the new fg-daemon option
an accompanying systemd service file

In your case you will also need to use lingering1 (lingering2)  and the settings KillUserProcesses
Less simple
[You are using an earlier emacs that does not have fg-daemon]
In that case you must use type=forking. That requires also PIDFile=.  AFAIK old Emacs doesn't provide this but here's a hack.
Allowing systemd to guess the pid works sometimes but is not recommended by systemd and should be treated as broken by default.
See also

Debian bug
Arch linux changes from default
Comment: It's not just systemd service units, either.  Since 2016, there has been a service bundle, that normally goes in `~/.config/service-bundles/services/emacs`, for running emacs 26 or later with `--fg-daemon` as a per-user service under the nosh toolset's per-user service management.
Comment: @Erichansen Nice to see that you've accepted my suggestions. It would be good (for future readers) to see what combo of my suggestions worked for you. Updating your question with this would be best. Though just a comment "Followed no 2" or whatever also fine.


Do wires need to share similar characteristics in order for crosstalk to occur?

Question: My understanding of crosstalk is how a radio transceiver works. You basically tune your transmitter and receiver to a similar frequency in order to get a cross-coupling of energy (the transmitter's energy gets coupling over to the receiver, hence the receiver is able to listen to what is being broadcasted). Is this analogous true for crosstalk in parallel unshielded, untwisted wires where the 2 wires have similar inductance and capacitance?
Answer: Your question is a bit confusing since your title doesn't quite match what you asked. You also makes few statements that are incompletes.

You basically tune your transmitter and receiver to a similar frequency in order to get a cross-coupling of energy

Receiver and transmitter are often complex system including many subssystems. They includes modulator/demodulator, antennas, filters etc. So "tuning" them is a complex task that requires many parts to interract together.

Is this analogous true for crosstalk in parallel unshielded, untwisted wires where the 2 wires have similar inductance and capacitance?

A capacitance involve two elements. A single wire doesn't have a capacitance. It has a capacitance with something else.
This being said, to answer your title question, no, two wires doesn't need to share similar charateristic (I assume here that you refer the resistance and inductance) to have crosstalk.
See Wikipedia's definition :

In electronics, crosstalk is any phenomenon by which a signal transmitted on one circuit or channel of a transmission system creates an undesired effect in another circuit or channel. Crosstalk is usually caused by undesired capacitive, inductive, or conductive coupling from one circuit, part of a circuit, or channel, to another.

You need some sort of coupling between the two elements. In the case of long unshielded, untwisted wires, there is severals sources of coupling :

Capacitive coupling. The 2 wires act as a capacitors. Capacitor have low impedance at high frequency. A fast time-varying signal like an aggressive digital edge or a high frequency radio signal in one conductor would affect to other conductor. Capacitive coupling has nothing to do with electromagnetic waves.
Inductive coupling. Long wires next to each other also have an inductive coupling, so they act as transformer. Big currents in one conductor will create a magnetic fields that will induce an electromagnetic force in the other conductor.
ElectroMagnetic coupling (or interference). EMI will moslty be present if you have big changes of current in time. The length, material, shape of the wire will all affect its effectiveness to transmit/receive EM waves. Altough you seemed interested in "tuning" your wire to avoid interference, EMI is not restricted in bandwidth. A current surge in a wire will generates noise in a very wide frequency range. Even if you have an antenna tuned for a specific frequency, it will receives noise anyway.

Hope I could make things a little clearer.
Answer: Lets put some numbers into an example of magnetic coupling, between an rectangular loop of some size: Area, and a long straight wire in the plane of the loop.
Vinduce = { MU0 * MUr * Area / (2 * pi * Distance) } * dI/dT.
The loop Area can be 1cm long with 1/3 of 1/16th inch height above GND plane; this would be any 2 adjacent layers of a 4 layer PCB of total thickness 1/16 ".
The "long straight wire" could be ANY trace on the PCB, containing the aggressor (transmitter of interference) energy.
Suppose your loop is 100cm from the 2,000 amp bus of an electric speed controller, switching in 1uS. Thus dI/dT = 2e9 amps per second.
Consider the entire PCB.....the GND structure (chopped up badly, or a clean plane) to be 4" by 4".
Vinduce = 2e-7 * Area/Distance * dI/dT
Vinduce = 2e-7 * 0.1meter * 0.1meter / 0.1meter * 1e+9
Vinduce = 2e-7 * 0.1 * 1e+9 = 2e-7 e-1 e+9 = 2e1 = 20 volts induced in the GND plane...........massive eddy current.
Answer: No, there does not need to be any similarity between wires.
There doesn't have to be any similarity between radios, either — radios include tuned circuits or other such mechanisms not because it is necessary but because it is useful, so that multiple transmitters can avoid interfering with each other and receivers can select just one transmission.
(Strictly speaking, any possible radio is somewhat frequency-selective, if nothing else due to the size of its antenna. But this is a much, much weaker effect than deliberate filtering.)

You specified untwisted parallel wires, but I'll mention anyway that there is an interesting case in twisted pair wiring. As you may know, the purpose of twisted pair is to ensure that the two wires in the pair are (approximately) equally influenced by reasonably uniform outside fields, so that the differential signal carried on the pair is unaffected.
But if multiple twisted pairs are bundled into one cable, there can be crosstalk because both pairs are alternating. Therefore, each pair in such a cable is twisted at a different rate, so that the same effect applies (the lineup of the conductors goes from A+ A- B+ B- to A+ A- B- B+ and back) though over longer distances than the basic twist rate.
So, that's a case where a deliberate dissimilarity prevents crosstalk. But it only applies when you have wires.


How can I interpret a model with good p-values and a bad R^2?

Question: I performed a linear regression and I got a p-value < 0.05 but my R^2 is low (< 0.04). How can I interpret the results? The model is significant but there's not a good fit, what can I do to solve this? (without affecting too much of my p-value)
Thank you
Comment: Does the answer to the following help? https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/269915/regression-with-low-r2-and-low-p
Answer: The p value is an estimate of (deep breath) the probability that the relationship you see would occur in a randomly drawn sample of size n from the population if the relationship you see did not actually exist in the population. If your p value happens to equal or be under the arbitrarily chosen threshold (usually 0.05), then it is called "significant", which means that, for the p = 0.05 threshold, you accept a 1 in 20 chance that the result you see actually is just a random burp in the population and not reflective of any real relationship in the population. So, "significant" might mean "likely to exist".
R^2, on the other hand (coefficient of determination) is an estimate of the strength of that relationship. That is, to what extent does the model "explain" the response? The conventional interpretation of the R^2 is that it represents the fraction of the "activity" in the response explained by the model. Thus, an R^2 of 0.2 means that 20% of the "activity" in the of the response is "captured" by the model. The other 80% is due to "other stuff". Note that I say "activity". This could correspond to "upward trend", "downward trend", "trend that matches a sinusoidal curve", "trend that matches a parabola", "trend that matches the different category distributions", or whatever the underlying model assumption is.
Thus, a low p/high R^2 model would mean that it is unlikely (4% chance) that the results you got do not reflect the population at large, but that "other stuff" not in your model "explains" the outcome far better than your current model does. If you have the funding, it's a great excuse to do more experiments that take into account other possible predictor variables for a multiple regression.


why does genesis 1:27 says man was created in God's image and then in Genesis 2:7 is when God actually creates man

Question: I know God Created man on the 6th day (Genesis 1:27) so I was questioning why it talks about God forming man again in (Genesis 2:7).
I do get it but I need a full clarification.
Comment: Welcome Dorinda! It's a question many have wondered about and you have already gotten some answers that will provide you with plenty of food for thought. Please take a look at the Tour and the Help pages (links below, left) to get better acquainted.
Comment: Welcome to SE-BH. Your question up-voted +1.
Answer: That is because the creation account at the start contains two accounts, which are not contradictory, but complimentary. It starts with the Elohim Account : Genesis 1:1 to 2:3. This is immediately followed with the Jehovah Elohim Account : Genesis 2:4 to 3:24. Notice how in the first account God [Elohim] is the word used to identify the Creator, but in the second account Jehovah God [Yahweh Elohim] is used?
A thorough comparison between the two accounts needs to be undertaken to assist in finding the answer to the question. This shows very different emphases, which indicate a spiritual meaning, and of things to come. Now I will quote from a book on the subject of Genesis, points pertaining to this.

"There is a first Adam and his seed or posterity; and there is a
last Adam, which is Christ. The first Adam in the garden was called 'the figure of him that was to come', Rom.5:14. But if a figure,
Where is that figure but in Genesis? And if two accounts appear, Why but for this same reason?
In the beginning obviously there was but one Creation, for which but
one record would have sufficed. But in the foreknowledge and counsel of God another Creation was yet to come. Likewise in the beginning
but one man appeared. But in the eternal purpose of God another Man
was yet to come. This hidden mystery, kept secret from the foundation
of the world, was signified in a hidden way from the very beginning.
That is why there are two accounts. That is why the two records are
written in such different ways. Because aspects are included and
excluded respectively to stress the difference between what was in
Adam and this Creation, and what would be in Christ and the new
Creation. Why? Because two men, and their seeds respectively, were
in view from the very beginning." Creation, John Metcalfe, pp. 33-34,
http://www.johnmetcalfepublishingtrust.co.uk/contact_us.htm

Missing from the first account are - Jehovah, Adam, soul, dust, garden of Eden, the Fall, serpent, Tree of Life and the other tree. Yet being made in the image of God is stated in both accounts! That must be highly significant, and it is, when it is understood why there are two accounts. The book goes on to explain the significance but there is far too much on this to copy here. Here are some key points that might help understanding to begin, first regarding Genesis 1:27.

"But the life which is in his image reflects divine life and vigour.
Death has no place in this... God is a Spirit, Jn.4:24. Then, above
all, the image and likeness of God in man must reflect spirituality,
just as every quality and characteristic of true humanity - in the
image and likeness of God - must be spiritual." (Ibid. p.60)

The first account speaks, be it ever so faintly, of the world to come, the New Creation in Christ, and we should then be looking in the rest of the Bible for how he is "the image of God" and how believers in Christ are conformed to the image of Christ. Try studying these New Testament texts: Colossians 1:15-27; 2 Corinthians 4:3-4; 1 Corinthians 11:7; Romans 8:29. Then study 1 Corinthians 15:45-49 which ties Adam in the garden in together with Christ - the first man, and the second man who is the Lord from heaven.
With regard to "the image of God" in the first account, the main emphasis lies in the concept of 'image and likeness', together with that of 'dominion'. In the second account, note that the created man is now named as Adam (the first Adam). Further:

"This is not to say that nothing at all in the subsequent Jehovah
Elohim account is prophetic of Christ [cf. 2:21-24 with Ephesians
5:30-32]. This shows that in the eternal purpose of God - even before
the Fall - Adam himself in innocence was to look for and hope in
Another yet to come, of whom he himself was but the figure, and
therefore in whom he should put all his confidence. Then why should it
come as any surprise to see Christ foreshadowed so early as Genesis
1:26-28?" (Ibid. p.74)

Psalm 8 and Hebrews 2:5 relate to all of this, too much to detail here, so follows a concluding quote from the book:

"Moses now shows how Jehovah Elohim formed the man that should till
the ground. He was made of dust... He is earthy. But how can this
convey the image of God, who is spiritual, a Spirit? Because 'Jehovah
Elohim breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.' Then man became
'a living soul'. Genesis 2:7.
...Since it was not given to him to have life in himself, and because
he had received life from above through his nostrils by the breathing
of Jehovah Elohim, it behoved the man in all things to be subject to
him on whose constant inbreathing he depended for life.
...chapter 2:7 teaches uniquely that man, formed from the dust of the
ground, proceeding from the earth, was sustained by breath from above.
Far from having strength or ability, man in innocence - let alone
after the Fall - did not so much possess life in and of himself.
...Abiding in dependent subjection, he stood. But turning from his
Maker to supposed knowledge and strength within himself in order to
sustain his life independently, it was impossible for him to stand."
(Ibid. pp 79 & 81)
Answer: The book of Genesis contains two creation accounts:

Gen 1:1-2:3 describes the creation of the "the heavens and the earth" in six days

Gen 2:4-25 describes, ie, expands upon the creation of mankind that occurred on the sixth day.  That is, the second account is an expansion of Gen 1:26-29

This is typical of the layout of the entire book of Gensis - each succeeding section of Genesis is an expansion of some portion of one of the previous sections.  See the appendix for more detail.
APPENDIX - Genesis Structure
Almost all commentators now structure the literary form of the book of Genesis around the "Toledoths" – a Hebrew word that is variously translated as, "the generations of", "the history of", "the account of", "the record of", etc.  The debate in Genesis concerns the function of these Toledoths – do they form a heading (for what follows) or a colophon (footnote and "signature" of what has preceded)?  Wiseman suggested, after studying Akkadian documents, that these Toledoths were colophons containing the identity of the author, and created an elaborate Tablet theory about Genesis.  What are the facts?  The 11 Toledoths in Genesis are:

Gen 2:4 toledoth of Heavens and Earth
Gen 5:1 toledoth of Adam
Gen 6:9 toledoth of Noah
Gen 10:1 toledoth of Shem Ham and Japheth
Gen 11:10 toledoth of Shem
Gen 11:27 toledoth of Terah
Gen 25:12 toledoth of Ishmael
Gen 25:19 toledoth of Isaac
Gen 36:1 toledoth of Esau
Gen 36:9 toledoth of Esau in Hill Country
Gen 37:2 toledoth of Jacob

If the Toledoths are intended as a Colophon (footnote containing the author's "signature") to each section, then:

The last third of Genesis has no author
Some sections were written by people who did not witness the events or were antagonistic to the events and people, eg, most of the last 5 except Gen 36:9.
The first section was written by the heavens and the earth (!?!)

By contrast, if each Toledoth is a section heading:

Each section is about what the heading states without exception
Gen 1:1 – 2:3 was clearly written separately and in a very different style, verging on poetic.

This leads to a simple idea about the possible origin of the book of Genesis.  It is probable (in agreement with Wiseman) that each Toledoth was written by a different (unstated) person (NOT the person in the Toledoth), and later, Moses collected and collated them, edited and arranged them, with an added introduction about creation, to create the book of Genesis, essentially as we now have it.
Comment: + 1.... very informative. And I congratulate you on a creative way of combining a source-critical approach to the text with the idea of Moses as the ultimate author.
Comment: Out of all the answers here, which may, or may not include my own, I think this is the most on point. Well done, + 1.
Answer: Why does Genesis 1:27 say man was created in God's image, and then in Genesis 2:7 is when God actually creates man?
Before I get into this, let me say at the outset that I am not a believer in the so called "Documentary Hypothesis", as outlined by one poster here. I am for Moses being the author, through and through, and that goes for the other four books of the "Pentateuch".
The two verses mentioned and in question make reference to, and firstly, the creation of man, and secondly, the formation of that said man, Adam. In the first instance, where God is referenced, the generic term for deity as well as a proper name for the true God, is used, Elohim in actual fact, an intensive plural, denoting greatness and majesty (the Being to be feared), rather than a plurality of Gods (the predicate verb in Gen, 1:1 is masculine/singular, as are the other predicate verbs regarding Elohim, at least through Gen, 2:3). In the second instance, we find a softening of our Deity, in that the proper name of God is more personified and becomes JHVH, or YHWH, Elohim (Jehovah, or Yahweh, God) - not withstanding the fact that most modern day bibles prefer "Lord God", mistakenly deferring away, IMO, from any actual name reference - Jehovah, or Yahweh, being the most significant name for God in the O.T. It has a twofold meaning: the active, self-existent One (since the word is connected with the verb meaning "to be", Exod, 3:14); and Israel's Redeemer (Exod, 6:6).
In Gen,1:1-2:3, it is all about the creation of "the heavens and the earth" in six days, including the creation of mankind on the sixth day. Whereas a subtle change in the narrative comes about in Gen, 2:4-25, swelling the narrative with regard to mankind's beginning. In verse 7, in particular, when referring to the creation of Adam, we now have the formation of Adam:-
Gen, 2:7, NASB

Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

A note to the wise: Gen, 1:26, which obviously immediately precedes Gen, 1:27, does not say that - man was created in God's image - it actually says:-
Gen, 1:26, NASB (bolding mine)

Then God said,"Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness ......"

Many a theologian has put forward their own theories as to what these "1st Person plurals" could be in reference to. I have already implied that God, here referenced, i.e. Elohim, Himself, may well indeed be an intensive plural, denoting greatness and majesty, but that hardly explains the "Us" and "Our". For the possible answer, we should probably compare with John 1:1-18, where "Word" has it, that we could be talking about two  divinities, after all is said and done.
Answer: A simple way of understanding the reason for the two accounts is that when the Bible was put together, two separate traditions were combined - one mostly in chapter one and the other beginning at Gen. 2:2. Note the transition between the two accounts:
Genesis 2

1 Thus the heavens and the earth and all their array were completed. 2
On the seventh day God completed the work he had been doing; he rested
on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken. 3 God blessed
the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the
work he had done in creation.
[new account begins here] 4 This is the story of the heavens and the
earth at their creation. When the Lord God made the earth and the
heavens— 5 there was no field shrub on earth and no grass of the field
had sprouted, for the Lord God had sent no rain upon the earth and
there was no man to till the ground, 6 but a stream[d] was welling up
out of the earth and watering all the surface of the ground— 7 then
the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew
into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living
being.

As @Anne mentioned, the first account uses the word "elohim," translated as "God," while the second uses the word YHWH, usually translated as "the LORD" or Jehovah. Scholars who ascribe to the so-called documentary hypothesis actually see several sources at work in the book of Genesis. For more information on this follow the link. On the other hand, scholars who reject this hypothesis look for other explanations, such as the first chapter speaking of the physical creation and the second speaking about the creation of the human spirit.
Comment: It is only natural justice that the down voters explain the reasons of such, by adding comments. Otherwise one feels like summoned to the court without knowing the charges against (reminding the old Inquisition days)! And we often discuss about justice of God!!
Comment: I commend @Dottard's answer to readers who recognize more than one hand at work but also want to maintain the idea that the Torah was ultimately written by Moses.
Comment: Many thanks for your kindness.  While I believe the evidence for the documentary hypothesis is flimsy at best, I would not downvote anyone who holds that view.  However, it appears that a few on this site cannot tolerate the thought of anything that even smells of the DH.
Comment: I  appreciate all views that try to understand God sincerely. If I were a communist, I suppose I would join Chairman Mao in saying: "let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend."
Comment: Cannot go along with this, but just so you know I am not one of the "down voters" here.


Pfsense multi site-to-site wan with policy based routing

Question: We want to create a Hybrid multi WAN site to site connection between two (and more?) remote offices.
The office has two WAN connections to the HQ. One MPLS and one ordinary Internet connection. In the end policy based routing should utilise both connections (For example, send important traffic like VoIP over MPLS and everything else over the cheaper line)
We want to send the traffic on each interface only encrypted over each wire, so we will later create an IPSec or OpenVPN connection on each  link. For testing purpose, we started with a GRE tunnel.
Both sides see and can communicate with each other.
We defined two gateways on each side on the pfsense devices. Each with the GRE IP of the remote pfsense device. We also put both into a Gateway group and configured different tiers.
After that we created a floating rule, that matches incoming Traffic on the LAN side to the remote network, and sends it to the gateway group. This works as expected, on both sides.
But the remote side, that receives the packet, does something wrong.
Pflog tells us that a state is created with a default rule on the GRE interface (match in on GRE0). Wer also see traffic on the remote host, and it's answer, but for some unknown reason, no traffic is going back over the tunnel. It seems that the pfsense device somehow forgets/ignores the state? (Further investigation needed)
I can not present a configuration as I am writing this from home, and the machines are in our office (currently in a lab environment)
We see that packets arrive on the remote site, and server, but to coming back to the sender.
From what I understand, the packet should be automatically returned on the gateway it arrived on, as the state is created there. But I also read that the redirect-to rule in pf should also have an return-to rule, on the other side. But no such rule was found in pfctl -sr. And no option in de pfsense webgui.
We are not doing any kind of NAT here!
I would appreciate any ideas on how people solved such a setup, and what I could have done wrong?
I am sorry that I cannot provide more information, but I am trying to solve a non private problem in my private time :)
Comment: Is your network configured such that the same combinations of source and destination IP address will be valid on both connections?
Comment: Hi, i Posted the Question on the pfsense forum now, and still got no answer :( Is my setup so strange? https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=105510.0
Answer: Change "State type" to "None" under advanced settings within a floating rule used to direct traffic to a gateway group.


Minimum thereshold for scholarship

Question: I emailed a professor in Australia for a PhD program. In the response, and as a part of that, he told me "For scholarships, you need to be at least 85% and over". What does it mean? Is this refer to GPA or something else?
Comment: Probably, but he's the one who has the ability to clarify, so why not ask him?
Answer: It may be GPA. It may be rank in your class. It may be your percentile on the graduate exams. I agree with @GrotesqueSI: The answer is to email the professor again and request clarification.
Answer: Typically Australian universities would use Honors 1 equivalence for allocating scholarships both to locals and international students. So the 85 would be that of an equivalent mark. I have found one document from QUT that explains this, you should search something similar for the university you are applying for.
https://cms.qut.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/275477/honours-equivalence-research-applications.pdf
In my experience that would be the minimum and without things adding to it, you would be less likely to be competitive for a scholarship.

Minimum thereshold for scholarship