Are there any organisms that perform photosynthesis-like processes with thermal energy alone?

Question: The closest I can find are thermophiles, but it seems they use the chemicals present in the hot environment for energy, not the heat itself.
Comment: Welcome. Photosynthesis means synthesis fueled by photons. As a consequence, thermally driven 'photosynthesis' is technically impossible. Can you elaborate on your Q, add relevant considerations and your own findings so far? One-liners are discouraged.
Comment: @bob1 - Heat isn't the same as IR; objects can release IR and more so when their temperature rises. Objects can absorb IR and increase in temperature. Heat in itself is a vague term; it describes perceptually high temperatures. But that's subjective - what is high?
Comment: @AliceD - heat(infra-red radiation) is composed of photons too, just longer wavelength than visible light, so it isn't technically impossible. You can certainly generate fluorescence from IR range, and fluorescence uses similar electron stimulation to photosynthesis
Comment: @AliceD, my understanding is that anything above 0K will emit IR. Conceptually IR is how a potential thermoautotroph could work, not that we know of any organisms that do work this way.
Answer: Thermophiles are organisms that are capable of surviving high temperatures. It doesn't mean they use or harvest the thermal energy in any way. Normally proteins start to unfold and degrade at temperatures above about 41 °C and all other organisms have a hard time coping with the effects.
Usually biology uses chemical energy. Photosynthesis is the one exception of a biological system converting the energy of photons directly into chemical energy stored in complex biomolecules for all others to use as nutrition.
Organisms that do not rely on those complex biomolecules but can support themselves are called autotroph. So photosynthetic organisms are  photoautotroph and micro organisms that use chemical energy from inorganic compounds are chemoautotroph. The inorganic compounds used can be as simple as decomposed water by radioactive decay.
Comment: Welcome. OP asks for thermally-fueled 'photo'synthesis (thermosynthesis?), not for a definition of thermophiles.
Comment: OP wrote "it seems they use the chemicals present in the hot environment for energy" and OP is right about this. OP asks for "photosynthesis-like processes" and not for miraculous "thermally-fueled 'photo'synthesis". There is nothing wrong with asking if life is known that directly converts thermal energy. An to my knowledge the answer is: No!
Comment: @AliceD [Heat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat) is certainly not a "vague term" but directionless energy not able to perform work.


Cannot find OSX El Capitan installer after installation

Question: I just downloaded and installed Mac OSX El Capitan via the App Store and want to install it on another machine via USB , but I can't find the downloaded installer. Where did it go? I have limited MB's on my internet connection , so I don't want to download it again!
Answer: You'll have to download it again because it's gone! The OS X Installer application bundle is automatically deleted when the install is finished, when it's executed from a running occurrence of the OS.  In other words, when doing an in-place upgrade, one needs to first make a copy of the installer if needed to be used again.
As an example, when the Install OS X El Capitan.app was downloaded, it's saved in the Applications folder and a copy of it needs to be made, preferably to another location, first before proceeding with the upgrade.
Note that if you've been using Time Machine, there may be a copy of the Installer application bundle in the backup, however, timing is everything. That is to say, because of the size of the installer and the time of the last backup in conjunction with when the installer was downloaded and used to preform the upgrade, there is the possibility that the copy of the Installer application bundle is not a complete copy.
Comment: Time Machine is smart enough to not back up half of an application bundle, so if it's there then it *is* the entire installer.
Comment: @grgarside, I have found on more then one occasion large files in my Time Machine backup not be the complete file and why I made that statement. Maybe it depends on differing factors. Could have been I shut the machine down during a backup and it wasn't cleaned up properly. Can't say for sure as I deleted the files in question from the backup and can't go back and check.


Draconic Lineage feats vs Reserve Feats

Question: Dragon Magic presented draconic Lineage feats, which let you convert spell slots into various attacks/abilities that varied in power by the slot spent. Complete Mage gave us Reserve Feats, which gave you an infinite-use spell-like ability as long as you had the ability to cast an appropriate spell, and said ability varied in power by the spell unspent. I can't seem to decide which would be better; on one hand, Draconic Lineage feats let you have a particular type of spell at any level without taking up space on your spell list, but requires Draconic Heritage as a prerequisite. On the other hand, Reserve feat's abilities are unlimited use, but would require you to have a decent stock of the appropriate spell type on your list, which might make you easier to counter. Which should I choose?
Comment: If any of these answers were helpful to you, it'd be most appreciated if you could accept one. If not, let us know what you still need to know!
Comment: Oh my bad; one was helpful enough, I just neglected to accept one this whole time.
Answer: In general, Reserve feats
You can hold down a Reserve feat forever and ever as long as you've got an appropriate spell memorized or spell slot open. This makes them great for backups, out-of-combat healing, blasting, and a myriad of other things that you might want to have around but don't really want to burn precious spell slots on. Reserve feats can be a great way to make a character feel more magical without having to optimize your numbers or carry around enough scrolls to found your own library.
A note: Reserve feats don't eat up the spell you need to have memorized in order to use them, which means that you can set that spell slot and forget about it for the rest of your career. Unless something starts ripping into you with negative levels or mental ability score damage, your Reserve feat will always be active and ready to rumble.
Comment: I know it's unlimited, I was just nervous about having to keep taking on spells fitting the reserve feat as I leveled up so it would get more powerful as I did. I suppose if I just didn't go overboard in that regard, I should be fine.
Comment: @Cobalt Honestly, it's probably fine to use something less than FULL POWAH, but if you want to keep a high level slot open for your Reserve feats it's not really that big a deal, especially if you utilize some of the relatively cheap options for slot expansions like pearls of power or rings of wizardry - or just carry more scrolls.
Answer: I'll cast my vote for reserve feats also, for me they've solved a great issue regarding party balance.
Either the party worked at the speed:

of those with spells i.e fight until there are no more spells then rest thus the classes who theoretically could go on longer lose their advantage(that they fight longer)
of those without spells and in some fights I have rounds where I have to use my crossbow so that I have spells left over.

This is solved you see by the reserve feat and always having a bit of fire or lighting so I can so we can go with the second option.
And even if we go with the second option another advantage was that in my heart of hearts, I always thought no true wizard should run out of magic, so reserve feats were a great help with this fluff wise in 3.5 .
Answer: Part of it depends on your spellcasting class. For most, I find Reserve feats highly useful, and the Draconic Lineage feats suboptimal at best, but its really not a direct comparison, since they give two very different types of benefits, useful in different ways to different characters. The reserve feats are mostly useful for increasing staying power, for characters who find themselves constantly running out of spells/slots while the rest of the group is still good to go. Draconic Lineage feats are more of a versatility boost, useful for spontaneous casters with limited spells known to get additional effects, as a scaling alternative to Extra Spell, or for preparatory casters to have an effect always available spontaneously, such as a researcher who wants to load up on research-aid spells, and still have some combat options if he gets jumped in the library.
For preparatory casters, the Lineage feats are rarely worth it for adventurers, as you can usually get a stronger version of the same effect by learning an appropriate spell, whereas the infinitely reusable nature of the Reserve feats is a big help if you have a group that doesn't habitually rest after every stray goblin. However, from the OP's stated concerns about having to fill up with qualifying spells every spell level to use them, it sounds like he/she is running a spontaneous caster. In that case, it may be worth the reduced power of the spell for a given slot vs Extra Spell in order to have it scale as you level up, and to get that type of utility from every spell slot with a single spell's worth of investment. Conversely, Reserve feats are significantly less attractive to most spontaneous casters because of the aforementioned concern with loading up on qualifying spells every level, and also because they tend to have far more generous spells-per-day progressions to begin with, so they have less to gain from the improved staying power.
Comment: Good points, though I think I've found a workaround to reserve feats in the fact that my spell list already had a decent number of Force spells, and since I'm pretty sure not much resists/is weak to force as much as other types, I think I'll just take a Force-type reserve feat.

Draconic Lineage feats vs Reserve Feats


How do I put a lore AND an enchantment on an item in Minecraft?

Question: I am someone who likes minecraft and all commands in it. except what I'm having trouble with is how to put a lore AND an enchantment on an item in minecraft.
Answer: This is an example of giving yourself an item with lore:
/give @p diamond_sword{display:{Lore:["text here"]}}

Just replace "text here" with the desired text.
This is an example of giving yourself an item with an enchantment (sharpness in this case):
/give @p diamond_sword{Enchantments:[{id:"minecraft:sharpness",lvl:1}]}

"lvl" is the level of the enchantment. I made it 1, but you could make it 2 3 4 or as high as you want.
This is an example of giving yourself a diamond sword with the lore of "shiny!" and with a knockback 3 enchantment:
/give @p diamond_sword{display:{Lore:["shiny!"]},Enchantments:[{id:"minecraft:knockback",lvl:3}]}

To find a full list of possible enchantments to use, go to:
https://minecraft.wiki/w/Enchanting#Data_values
Answer:
Moderator Note: This answer appears to be outdated in newer versions of Minecraft. Please reference one of the newer answers if you're playing the latest version.

/give @p 'custom_item' 1 0 {display{Name:"Custom Name"},Lore:["Custom lore"]},ench:[{id:'enchantmentid',lvl:'enchantmentlvl}]}
Here is an example given: giving sword called "Bertha" with a lore "she's beautiful" with sharpness I.
/give @p wooden_sword 1 0 {display{Name:"Bertha"},Lore:["She's beautiful"]},ench:[{id:16,lvl:1}]}
You need to tell what item you're giving, followed by the amount. (for swords and tools more than one will stack) the second number is the damage amount. This means how much damage the item will have when it is given to you.
So, if you want a really OP bow, that has only 10 usage left, you can do /give @p bow 1 374
`
Comment: It's generally a good idea to explain what this is going to do, not just dump a command as an answer.
Answer: With 1.13.x the command syntax has changed.
It is now:
/give @selector item_name{Enchantments:[{id:"enchantment_name",lvl:number}],display:{Lore:["lore_text"]}} item_amount
For example:
/give @p minecraft:diamond_sword{Enchantments:[{id:"minecraft:sharpness",lvl:5}],display:{Lore:["Excalibur!"]}} 1

/give @selector amount meta item_name-or-id has changed to /give @selector item_name amount
numeric IDs no longer work, so the enchantment (and any other IDs) must be written out
the item data is now tied directly to the item: item_name{data, some_data{more_data},etc}


What would a differential translation be for 「先住民」 and 「先住民族」?

Question: I am trying to translate the phrase: 「先住民」又は「先住民族」 into English in referrence to international laws and treaties concerning indigenous people, and I am not certain what the difference is between the two, or at least how they would be translated differently in English.
Answer: Though I am not sure if it makes a meaningful difference in English, what the original means is:

"aboriginal person(s)" or "aboriginal race"
Answer: I think the problem with "aboriginal race" is that "race" is normally understood to refer to a group defined in terms of a shared genetic heritage and is usually rendered in Japanese as  人種 (じんしゅ) , while  民族 (みんぞく) corresponds more closely to English "ethnic group", that is, a group defined in terms of language, culture, etc.
The English terms that come to mind (my mind, anyway) for dealing with this translation problem are:
Indigenous peoples, native peoples, aboriginal peoples, autochthonous peoples, indigenes.
There are problems with the word "native" - certainly with the use of "natives" as a collective term for indigenous people - and with "aborigines", because it is nowadays pretty much restricted to the indigenous peoples of Australia (although in the 19th century it was commonly used of Native American peoples). I think "indigene" is an unusual word. "Autochthonous" is probably uncommon, although I use it myself in situations like this. I would, if I had to, probably go with "'indigenous peoples' or 'autochthonous peoples'".
I don't know the context, but it looks to me as though the writer is offering the two terms as ways of referring to the same groups. If that's so, perhaps you could be bold and simply translate with a single term, "indigenous peoples". However, since you're dealing with laws and treaties it is probably necessary to translate in such a way as to show that the Japanese uses two terms. One possibility might be "'indigenous peoples' (senjumin) or 'indigenous ethnic groups' (senjuminzoku)'". This would indicate to the reader that the original Japanese is using two very similar words.


Can I have a summary of The Halo story up to Halo 3?

Question: I have just purchased Halo 3 and I would like to know the story up to it so that I can play the campaign and understand what is going on.
Comment: Is there any reason you don't want to play the previous games? They've very fun, and can be acquired cheaply by now.
Comment: Just because I would rather just start at halo 3 so I can play with my friends and then If I enjoy it I might play the others afterwards.
Comment: I have played through Halo reach
Comment: I believe it is better to play it and learn the story as you go along. The surprises add a fun aspect, and a lot of the story can only be understood fully by not understanding the first time. If you have not, I would advise getting 1 and 2, and playing them. They go along with the main story, Reach is a prologue.
Comment: I feel the same way. I'd *strongly* recommend playing the first two games.
Comment: Note on SaintWacko's first comment: They might be cheap, but common stores do not sell them; Amazon or Ebay are the easiest ways.
Comment: Humanity led those dumb bugs out to the middle of nowhere to keep them from getting their *filthy* claws on Earth. But we stumbled onto something so hardcore that they're scrambling over each other to get it.  You don't care if it's God's own anti-son-of-a-bitch machine or a giant hula hoop, you aren't gonna let 'em have it.  What you will let 'em have is a belly full of lead and a pool of their own blood to drown in! [Am I right, Marines?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_HPGEwvbGsg#t=66s)
Answer: Here is the review of the games up to Halo 3.

Halo 1

You wake up
Covenant attack the ship you are on
The general for the Pillar of Autumn tries to land on the Halo ring
You get out of the ship on an escape pod
You crash land on ring
You search for others who used pods
Go into the facility to find the Halo control room
Covenant accidentally release Flood
Work with guilty spark to kill Flood
You figure out Guilty Spark is trying to turn on ring
You self destruct the crashed Pillar of Autumn to destroy the ring

Halo 2

It shows a Covenant Elite commander being stripped of his rank and then tortured by Tatarus, a Brute warrior
The Chief, Johnson, and soldiers are awarded for their actions on the first ring
A Covenant fleet appears outside of Earth
They attack New Mombassa, Kenya.
Chief takes them out, and the Covenant retreat through slipspace
The Chief fallows in the In Amber Clad
They find another ring, and chief goes to destroy it
The disgraced Covenant commander is offered position of the Arbiter
He goes to kill a heretic, and finds 343 Guilty Spark (Oracle)
The Covenant go to the newly found ring due to a distress signal from the Prophet of Regret
Tatarus tells Arbiter that the Prophets plan on annihilating the Elites
The Arbiter is sent down a chasm
The Gravemind saves him, and the Arbiter meets the chief
The Gravemind tells Arbiter that the Great journey will wipe out the Covenant, Humans, and the Flood
The Chief teleported to High Charity where a civil war is happening
Cortona realizes that the Gravemind used them as a distraction to infest the In Amber Clad
The Gravemind crashes it into High Charity to spread the Flood
Chief goes onto Forerunner ship and leaves Cortona behind to destroy High Charity and the Halo ring
Arbiter goes to the ring and rallies his allies to fight the brutes
Arbiter and Johnson kill Tartarus
They turn off the ring, but instead it makes it so all rings can be activated from the  "ark" at a safe distance
Chief goes back to Earth
Answer: Background Story
Humanity has expanded into space, colonizing many planets in different star systems. Humanity is still the dominating species in the galaxy until one colony is attacked by a group of aliens called The Covenant.
The Covenant is a hierarchical group of different alien species. They view humanity as a plague and are waging a holy war against them with the goal to eradicate humanity from the galaxy.
The war goes on for many years and humanity is on the losing end, mainly because The Covenant has superior technology.
Before The War, a top-secret organization had started to create super soldiers. Young children who trained their entire youth and have been augmented to be physically superior to normal humans. This project was named Spartan II (2)
You play as one of the last of these super soldiers, John-117.
You are accompanied throughout the majority of the games by one of the top A.I.'s in human history, Cortana.
Halo CE
The Covenant find and destroy the planet Reach, one of the biggest military installations of humanity and home to the Spartan II project.
Your ship, The Pillar of Autumn, has escaped from Reach by making a blind lightspeed jump into space.
Upon exiting slipspace, your ship is at an unknown alien installation (the Halo Ring).
The Covenant is already at this installation because they have already discovered it. The Covenant engages your ship and shoots it down.
While the ship crash lands on the alien installation, most personnel, including yourself, is evacuated with escape pods and pelican dropships.
After crash-landing on the Halo ring, you start a search and rescue to regroup with other human allies and stage a rescue assault on a Covenant battle-cruiser to save the Captain of The Pillar of Autumn, Captain Jacob Keyes.
During this time, you learn that the Halo ring is a weapon and that it is not built by The Covenant. The Covenant are however trying to activate the Halo Ring to use against Humanity.
You and the rest of the survivors start a search to reach the control room of the installation before The Covenant does.
After finding the control room, Cortana learns that the ring is not a weapon but something more dangerous. She sends you to find and stop Captain Keyes, who is at that time looking for a weapons cache.
While searching for the Captain, you encounter a new enemy, The Flood.
The Flood is a parasitic life form, that kills all viable life forms and then reanimates and transforms the corpse into a combat form to attack and obtain more bodies (vessels for spores).
The Flood was contained in special facilities on the Halo Ring and is the weapons cache that the Captain was looking for.
The Covenant has, however, already released The Flood.
While escaping the facility, you encounter an alien A.I. named 343 Guilty Spark. He explains to you that the ring is a Forerunner construction and that he is the monitor of Installation 04 (the Halo Ring).
343 Guilty Spark informs you that The Flood must be stopped and that the only way to contain the outbreak is to activate the Halo Ring. You assist Guilty Spark in retrieving the activation key for the Halo Ring.
When you return to the control room with Guilty Spark and the activation key, Cortana informs you that the ring is designed to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy. This is the only way to stop the flood, by starving them.
Cortana steals the activation key to prevent Guilty Spark from activating the ring.
You are now being hunted by 343 Guilty Spark and his Sentinals whilest The Flood is spreading throughout the Halo Ring and trying to find a way to leave the installation. The Covenant is trying to evacuate the Halo Ring.
You continue your search for Captain Keyes, because Cortana has a plan to blow up the remains of the Pillar of Autumn so that the Halo ring will be destroyed and cannot be used to wipe out all sentient life.
You eventually find Captain Keyes on a stranded Covenant cruiser which is being consumed by The Flood.  Captain Keyes is also consumed by The Flood.
You take his neural implant to obtain certain access codes and head to the crash site of The Pillar of Autumn.
You destroy the engine of The Pillar of Autumn and escape the ring in a small space fighter called a Longsword.
The Halo ring is destroyed, 343 Guilty Spark survives the destruction and is seen flying into space.
Halo 2

Prophets: the main leaders of The Covenant.
  Elites: the leading military race within The Covenant.
  Brutes: the newest race to join the Covenant, has no leading ranks but has enormous fighting power.

Halo 2 starts with a trial in the Covenant's "mother ship" called High Charity.
A Covenant commander is accused of heresy because he failed to protect Installation 04 (The Holy Ring) from the destruction by the hands of the Demon (John-117).
He is stripped of his rank and sentenced to death, The Prophets give him the option to become The Arbiter, a suicide unit sent out to complete tasks to maintain order within the Covenant.
A small Covenant fleet finds Earth, one ship breaks through the space blockade and lands on the continent of Africa.
You are sent to assault the Covenant Carrier that landed in an attempt to capture a Prophet. While starting the assault, the Covenant ship jumps into slipspace, in a desperate attempt, you follow it on the ship In Amber Clad with Captain Miranda Keyes (daughter of Jacob Keyes).
After exiting slipspace, both ships are at another Halo Ring, Installation 05.
The Arbiter is sent to find and kill a resistance leader within the Covenant.
 They find this leader at an installation near the destroyed Halo ring, Installation 04.
The resistance leader had found 343 Guilty Spark and calls it The Oracle, Guilty Spark has told the resistance leader about the Halo Rings and their purpose.
While the Prophets and The Covenant still believe the rings to be their holy weapons, this small resistance knows the truth.
The Arbiter kills the resistance leader and brings The Oracle to High Charity.  High Charity and the entire Covenant fleet then enter slip space and go to the newly found Halo Ring.
John-117 lands on Installation 05, find the Prophet that escaped earth and kills him before he can active the Halo Ring. The Covenant that just arrived with their entire fleet retaliate by bombing the site that John-117 is currently at. John-117 falls into the deep water of the Installation and is found (and rescued) by The Gravemind.
Because of the death of the Prophet, the Elites are removed from military power,Tartarus and the Brutes assume command of the militairy forces of the Covenant.
The Arbiter is sent onto Installation 05 to find the Activation Key, needed to activate the Holy Ring.
The Arbiter fights his way through heavily flood infested areas to retrieve the Activation Key. Human forces have also fought their way to the Activation Key. The Arbiter finds the activation but is betrayed by Tartarus.
The Arbiter is thrown into a cliff as he is told by Tartarus that all the Elites will soon be purged from The Covenant.
The Arbiter is found by The Gravemind and a civil war starts in the Covenant.
Tartarus takes Captain Miranda Keyes hostage.
The Gravemind is the hivemind for all the flood on Installtion 05, it has consumed another Prophet and the Monitor of the installation, The Flood is clearly dominant on the Halo Ring and far more advanced then it was in Halo CE's outbreak.
The Gravemind tells The Arbiter the truth about the Halo rings, the opens the eyes of the Arbiter about their Holy War against humanity.
The Gravemind teleports The Arbiter to the location of the control room of the installation and teleports John-117 to High Charity.
The Arbiter finds allies and starts to make his way towards the control room, on his way he meets up with Sgt. Johnson and form an alliance to stop Tartarus from activating the Halo Ring. Together they breach the control room and kill Tartarus.
Tartarus however did activate the Halo Ring, but Captain Keyes was able to stop the activation sequence.
This means that all the Halo rings are on stand by and can only be activated from The Ark.
John-117 fights his way through High Charity in an attempt to stop the Proghet of Truth of escaping.
The Prophet boards a Forerunner ship and escapes High Charity, John-117 boards the ship in the very last second before its departure.
The Prophet is heading for The Ark
At the same time, The Gravemind has assaulted In Amber Clad and consumed it.
He crash landed it on High Charity to spread his infection, Cortana stays behinde on High Charity to destroy In Amber Clad and stop the spread of the infection.
John-117 promises Cortana that he will come back for her, Cortana tells him not to make promises he cannot keep.
The Prophet of Truth and John-117 arrive back on Earth.

Note:
I know this answer is 4 years late, but the current answer is rather short and is not always clear on the identities of characters or locations without having played Halo 3 already. My answer aims at people who have not yet started Halo 3. I am also aware that my answer is quite long to be "a summary". But now there are 2 answers to provide information a long one and a short one.


Where is QT Skin maker

Question: There is a tool - http://qt.nokia.com/doc/qtopia4.2/qtopiacore-qvfb.html#skins which allows to use predefined skins. But i cant find tool for skin generation. Does it exists or skins should be created manually.
Answer: This is a rarely used feature since QVFB is intended to be used only for testing during development of embedded applications so no tool exists. They have to be created manually. I doubt Nokia will create a tool for this, but I'm sure there are some people who would use it if someone felt inclined to write it.

Where is QT Skin maker


Is there a free UNIX shell service that allows you to test function keys?

Question: I am testing a program that is a terminal emulator that runs through a web browser. I'd like to use a free UNIX shell service to test the function key maps (this program can also generate a function key map or you can manually put one in). I ask this because someone wants to be able to use the arrow keys and things of that nature.
Answer: I think you will struggle to find a service that gives you gratis access to a terminal on any server on the Internet unless you have friends that host these kinds of services.
You can try to use virtual hosts for your problem, meaning that you install a hypervisor on your machine, then install the operating system you want using that hypervisor and test your software that way.
There are several hypervisors that can be used and that are as far as I know gratis to use.

VirtualBox
QEMU
VMware vSphere
XEN
Comment: I'm finding the search for a free UNIX account to be a bit on the useless side. Alot of them don't care for free accounts and the free accounts are limited. They also want more information than I care to give which I suspect is because, as I've read, alot of hackers use UNIX shells in the past to be damage.
Comment: I know AIX is a popular system. Can one download AIX and use any of those things for that?
Comment: If you think about it, if the service is free, how are they making money? Probably by selling your details to some bid number crunching company. If you want things to be free, you have to expect having to give something else up.


How to send logs to plugin owner for a plugin?

Question: I am developing a plugin(that is already on WordPress) and wanted to know that how to do set up to get error logs from customers? Also, any idea on how to omit logs that should only be shown to customers and not included in final file sent to plugin owner(to maintain privacy and also allowing customer to debug at the same time in case the logs sent are not enough to debug)?
Comment: Have a look on this plugin Download "Error Log Monitor" https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/error-log-monitor/  from the plugin repository, you can easily refactor the plugin's code into your plugin.
Answer:
wanted to know that how to do set up to get error logs from customers?

If you want to do this, your best option is to use a 3rd party service that logs errors (whether it be PHP/JS/Web server errors).
I'm not sure if you can choose what type of bugs you want to show customers, maybe log to a different error log file depending on what type of error you find?
The following services can do what you need:
PHP - https://airbrake.io/languages/php_bug_tracker
JS - https://sentry.io/for/javascript/


Pull up resistor in SPI Flash?

Question: while going through one schematics , I found that we are using Pull up resistor for MISO, MOSI, CS in SPI connection between IC and Flash? Why we are using pull up for SPI connections? Is it any related to FLASH Programming?
Comment: It may define the logic levels when (whatever IC is) hasn't, to help prevent accidental data corruption.
Comment: You may find out that similar pull-ups/pull-downs are missing for other CMOS input loads - would be wise to add them perhaps :) Those resistors are absolutely necessary unless the MCU has built-in weak pull-ups, or the loads have them (loads = input pins of various CMOS chips, or mosfets in general). Floating CMOS inputs are bad news all around.
Answer: The main thing is, floating CMOS inputs are bad, and they float when nothing drives them, so it is best to pull them up or down.
You are free to pull the lines up or down (with one exception), but it might depend on a lot of things which you don't mention, like the MCU it is connected to.
The only thing that is very important is that the CS pin should be pulled up to keep the flash chip deselected during powerup, powerdown, and in general when the MCU is being reset or reprogrammed, so that the SPI flash never accidentally sees commands like write or erase.

Pull up resistor in SPI Flash?


noise floor estimation

Question: I want to estimate noise floor in the spectrum. I tested many methods using journals, but I couldn't find a stable method. Suggest that we have a spectrum consist of many signal and we want to estimate noise floor form signal.
Comment: Is that over a set of real measurements?
Comment: Every time I comment on one of your questions, it's deleted a couple hours later, and I still always comment the same: What's the *context* of this? Noise floor measurements depend on what kind of noise you're expecting, and what kind of signal you want to keep out of that measurement, and for what purpose that measurment is made.
Comment: So, if you could, for every question you ask, always describe your motivation for asking it, that would be a really easy but effective improvement to our ability to answer them :)
Comment: @Marcus Müller I think you haven't information about my questions, My questions are obvious and except of you no body has problem with them. Please don't worrisome.
Comment: @A_A In a simulation environment.
Comment: The floor is the bottom. The signal you can see is the content above the floor.
Answer: You can get help best if you can share what kind of signal do you have. For example, in scenarios where you have a multipath channel time domain response or 'channel impulse response', you can use mdeian of median of windows as your noise floor.
Because 'channel impulse response' will have multiple narrow peaks in time domain corresponding to each path, therefore, using mean of the complete CIR would result in biasing due to the high amplitude peaks.
Median is a better choice to avoid biased results of noise floor but it will require sorting operation and based on the length of signal, that might be a problem and complexity increases as $O(N.logN)$.
So, in such scenario it is best to use average of median of windowed sub-sections of the signal. You divide the complete signal into windows of size 256 or 512 and compute median of these sub-sections which will be pretty fast and then take median/average of this vector of medians. That is a pretty good noise floor and works well in practical scenario as well.
Comment: I added A image in my question. How I can calculate noise floor in this image?
Comment: @VelmaBenedict the method I suggested will work fine with the kind of signal you have shown

noise floor estimation


Gravitational waves vs ULF Radio waves

Question: During the recent merger of two Neutron stars the lead up to the merger was detected as gravitation waves. This was the merger of two spinning bodies that had very strong magnetic fields and they were orbiting each other. How sure is the community of physicists that the signals detected were not ULF radio waves? Radio waves would have had the same frequency and arrived within the same time frame.
Comment: LIGO detects the way a passing gravitational wave changes the geometry of spacetime. Radio waves cannot do this, so we can be absolutely sure that what LIGO detected was gravitational waves and not electromagnetic waves.
Comment: It was my understanding that the detection was the lead up to the merger which then ceased when the merger took place. I perhaps wrongly thought that this would be the way radio waves produced by orbiting magnetic bodies would show. i assumed that the greatest gravitation waves would be after the merger.
Comment: No, the gravitational waves are produced as the two bodies are spiralling inwards towards each other.
Answer: LIGO itself is designed to be insensitive to ULF waves. If it wasn't, the strong terrestrial ULF background would interfere with its operation.
ULF waves cannot propagate through interstellar space, where the plasma frequency is ~1 kHz. Below the plasma frequency, the plasma acts as a conductor: it's an effective Faraday shield.
The interplanetary plasma frequency is ~10 kHz, and the ionospheric plasma frequency is a few MHz, so the Earth's surface is even better shielded. Terrestrial ULF comes from things like lighning discharges below the ionosphere, inside all these layers of shielding.
We'd love to be able to detect extraterrestrial ULF: we'd get a better look at cosmic particle accelerators (pulsars and accretion disks) that way. We believe that extremely powerful ULF is involved in the acceleration process, but we can't study it directly.
Answer: LIGO's mirrors are charged as calculated in this answer.  The LIGO team has a technique to measure and keep this charge from getting too large over time.  However, the calculation shows that a ULF (~50 Hz) radio wave of 10 pT B-field amplitude would be in the noise of their magnetic field veto and cause a strain of $3 \times 10^{-21}$.
The LIGO team has applied a slowly varying B field to the mirror support + magnetometer, and demonstrated that it takes a large easily seen B field to make the event strains they see.  Unfortunately for the same E, $B_{Wave}=(1/c)E$ for an electromagnetic wave is much smaller than $B_{Loop}=(\frac{2}{r\omega})E$. Thus for a radius $r=1m$ loop driven at a frequency $\omega = 2\pi 50$, $\frac{B_{Wave}}{B_{Loop}}=5\times 10^{-7}$. So if a ULF wave came in with the same E as generated by their calibration loop, the $B_{Wave}$ would not be seen by the magnetometer.
However, as John Doty explains, any extraterrestrial ULF radio wave would be attenuated away by the plasmas in space and in the earth's ionosphere. This leaves terrestrial ULF signals like Q-bursts propagating in the earth-ionosphere cavity as a possible source.  It would be interesting to record the V(t) output of a short dipole antenna and see if chirp like signals exist in coincidence with LIGO events ...just to be sure they are not there!
Despite the above arguments, LIGO has most probably observed gravitational waves.  LIGO monitors and vetoes on many phenomena such as ground motion, lightning, storms, ....It is hard to imagine a source of terrestrial ULF chirps which escape the vetoes.  Also, after years of observing, LIGO seems able to explain the shapes and magnitudes of their many events as gravitational waves from physically reasonable sources.  Perhaps there are also other glitches in their data which ULF waves might explain?
Comment: I suppose if they were really ULF radio waves they would have been picked up by other ULF radio wave receivers. I am sure the team at LIGO would have checked for that before releasing their results.

Gravitational waves vs ULF Radio waves


Turkish 24 hours transit Visa for Bangladesh Holder

Question: I am a Bangladeshi citizen with an air ticket from Jeddah to Dhaka via Istanbul. I want to spend some time outside of Istanbul Airport. How can I get a Turkish 24-hour transit visa?
Answer: If, and only if, you have a visa or residence permit from a Schengen state, the UK, the US or Ireland, you can get an e-visa through this website https://www.evisa.gov.tr/en/
Otherwise, you'd Need to apply for a transit visa at a Turkish embassy.
There is no special 24-hour transit visa I'm afraid, so these are your options
Comment: He must also be traveling "for purpose of tourism or business", i.e. not employment.
Comment: Yes but those don't offer eVisas. I meant to say website is the only option for eVisas.
Comment: Kiosks are gone now. Website is the only available option.
Comment: @HankyPanky There are still visa-on-arrival desks (some sources claim there aren't anymore, but I've seen there are), though Bangladeshis are not eligible for that


Determining whether or not a font can render a Unicode character in Cocoa Touch

Question: Is there a way to determine whether or not a font can render a particular Unicode character in Cocoa? Alternatively, is it possible to specify the default substitute character?
Comment: Are you working with `NSTextView`? If not, what do you want to use this information for?
Comment: No; I want to be able to highlight or replace unsupported characters in a UILabel on iPhone OS.
Comment: conmulligan: Then you mean Cocoa Touch, not Cocoa.
Answer: Check out CTFontGetGlyphsForCharacters in the Core Text framework. If it returns zero for a given Unicode character's glyph index, then that character isn't supported in that font. The function returns false if any of the glyphs couldn't be found.
Comment: Core Text isn't really an option for me because it's only been introduced to iPhone OS with version 3.2 for the iPad.
Comment: In that case, you can use `CGFontGetGlyphWithGlyphName`, and pass in a string with just the character in question. I don't know what the rules are for composed characters, for example Helvetica on iPhone OS 3.1.3 has a glyph for e, but returns zero for é, ´, and combining acute accent.
Comment: This doesn't mean the glyph does not exist, it is more a reflection of the tables in the font file mapping characters to glyphs. The Apple Symbols font is a great example of this. It is probably the original font used precisely for providing lots of useful glyphs that are simply at a glyph index in the font file, but not necessarily mapped to a character. This is where familiarity with FontBook and the glyphs in a specific font by font index are helpful. but for iOS you may need to find or create an app that helps you review the glyphs at indexes in a specific font.
Comment: @Tony é may not be a single character in terms of the the font you're looking at. It may be ultimately composed by ´ and e
Answer: You can use CGFontGetGlyphWithGlyphName() for iOS older versions of iOS (2.0).  Apple doesn't seem to document the glyph names but I believe they correspond to this Adobe list:
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/en/opentype/glyphlist.txt
For example, the glyph for é (U+00E9) is named "eacute" and the code to get the glyph would be:
CFStringRef name = CFStringCreateWithCString(NULL, "eacute", kCFStringEncodingUTF8);
CGGlyph glyph = CGFontGetGlyphWithGlyphName(font, name);

Comment: A bit late, but glyph names are font specific and can be different from a font to another (some fonts might even not contain any glyph names at all).
Answer: Since it is on iOS, you might need to build or find an app that does this.
Ultimately, if the info is present for any individual glyph it is in the tables in the font file itself and that is pretty low level C work.
Much easier to build a tool that inspects the font and shows the glyph and glyph index (CGGlyph or NSGlyph value) then use the glyph index.


Uniform price vs discriminatory price double auction

Question: Uniform price and discriminatory price double auctions are the most commonly used auction mechanisms in the trading markets especially in peer-to-peer energy trading markets. However, I could not find which one is the better option in this particular domain. Can someone provide a comparative analysis of both auctions mechanisms?
Answer: I guess the main reason why you could not find an answer is that economists do not know, see, for instance this chapter of "Electricity Markets."
The auction theorist Peter Cramton has a few papers on this.


Simple C++ UML w/ reverse engineering

Question: I need a way to build C++ code from UML diagrams and vice versa.
Should be simple too hopefully. I don't mind paying too much.
Answer: You could try Sparx Enterprise Architect but the code quality would be average, not excellent.
I am not aware of any great automatic code generators for C++
Prices start from $135
Comment: EA is seconded. I don't use it as I resist using UML as much as possible, but when I did, it worked very well. Code generation should be as good as it gets, considering its creating a C++ version of a UML diagram, there's not much to get wrong.
Answer: Visio is slow, and ate a whole weekend's worth of work one day.  Don't use it for UML.
I've used UMLStudio in the past -- it's cheap, and it did a decent job of reverse engineering my C++ code to make diagrams.  It's a little wonky to use, but it's fast as hell once you get into the spirit of the thing.
It will also generate code, but I was mainly in "make pretty diagrams" mode, rather than a full round-trip back and forth attempt to use UML like architecture astronauts say it should be use.
Answer: Visio also supports this.
Answer: Not the answer you are looking for, but if the UML is that simple, then just write the code by hand, you will have far more control over you project in the long run. If you are wanting to use this as a technique to save large amts of repetitive typing, then on the face of it is sound like you may have a design problem to be addressed first.
I am slightly biased, as I would also say that if the UML is too complex then write the code yourself anyway, in fact I would seldom recommend generating code from UML.
UML is a modeling tool, it is not a programming language and should be language agnostic. You need be clear that those 2 concepts are different. Just because in your UML Model have a conceptual class, does not mean that when it comes to implementing that model that you need to create it as a class for various reasons ( Performance, Language constraints etc )
In short, let the design tools help you design, and the dev tools dev.
Answer: Borland Together was quite good for this when I used it during a c++ course.
The instructor recommended it, and it did seem to be quite feature-rich, but I'm unsure how much it costs.

Simple C++ UML w/ reverse engineering


Photoshop cut command is disabled

Question: I don't understand why I cannot cut image in Photoshop. The cut command is disabled. I'm sure that I have selected the image. I can copy and paste, but just not cut.
Comment: General advice for asking troubleshooting questions about Photoshop: always include a screenshot of the relevant part of your layers palette. Without it, answerers are reduced to shooting in the dark like what happened here. Thanks!
Comment: Is it a Smart Object?
Comment: Is it your locked background layer?
Comment: @Scott No, the image is on a separate layer.
Comment: @Vincent Thank you for your suggestion. I will next time!
Comment: @Wolff Yes it is a smart object. I didn't know that smart object cannot be cut. Once I rasterize it and make a selection. I can then cut.
Answer: To be able to cut you need to make sure:

layer is not locked
layer is not smart object. generally, needs to be a raster layer (no vector shapes)
you need to have something selected (i don't see anything selected in your image)
Comment: Thanks for your answer. Yes. the image is a smart object and it cannot be cut. Once I rasterized it, I can then make a selection and cut it. It also seems that I cannot cut the whole layer (unlike that I can copy the whole layer).
Answer: you can not cut from a Smart Object layer, you can copy, just can not cut. Have to rasterize it to cut.
Similar problem: If you can not cut AS WELL AS copy a selection, you must be working on a shape, and still, you got to rasterize it.
Comment: Yes that's the problem. Thanks for your answer!
Answer: It might be that your layer is a smart object
try to right-click on your layer and click rasterize layer
after then you could cut the photo.
be careful to duplicate your smart object layer because once you rasterize it
it won't be a smart object again so be aware to have a copy of  the original once.

Photoshop cut command is disabled


Getting HP Envy touch display to work a bit better

Question: Currently I have an HP Envy with a touchscreen running Ubuntu. The touchscreen does work to some extent (I can click most things and drag selection boxes on the desktop) but it doesn't seem to want to let me do anything involving clicking and dragging besides that, like highlighting text or moving windows or scroll bars. It also seems completely unwilling to let me click on small things, like the up/down buttons on either end of scroll bars, or the close/minimize/maximize buttons on windows.
I don't really mind if I can't scroll or use multi-finger gestures on this laptop the way I can on a tablet or phone, but I would like it if I could at least get the touchscreen working as well as a regular mouse or touchpad in terms of capability, and the complete inability to drag things or click small items is a bit of an issue on that score.
Thanks in advance for any help I can get here!
Answer: Turns out the problem was specific to XFCE installed under Ubuntu; now that I've switched back to Unity, there no longer seems to be any problem.
Still not sure what it was or how to fix it, but it now no longer applies to me.


Microsoft UI Automation Library Vs Coded UI Test

Question: I'm very much new to Test Automation kind of thing. Recently I've been assigned to a project where I have to write an application (or, a script may be, I'm not sure) that will automate the UI testing of a CAD-like WPF application which misses lots of AutomationIds.
After doing a little searching on MSDN and other sources I'm a bit confused about whether I should use the Microsoft UI Automation Library or the new Coded UI Test feature included in VS2010. I'm not getting the clear picture of which one of these two applies in which scenarios, what advantages one has over the other and which one suits my purpose.
Please shade some light if you have experience/knowledge on the matter. Thanks in advance.
Answer: Basically Microsoft UIA is the new accesibility library in .Net 4.0. WPF applications and controls have built-in support for UIA through the AutomationPeer class.
Coded-UI test is a Record & Play automation tool which uses the Microsoft UIA Library underneath. Since being a tool compared to writing code in C# it improves QA productivity for recording more test  cases.
For applications with automation support planned into it, Coded-Ui should be sufficient. If the AutomationIDs are missing make sure the controls have some unique property like Name. Use UIVerify or Inspect to check for this.
If NO unique property is avialble, there are the other below mentioned techniques you can use in combination with Coded-UI.

From an Event
When your application receives a UI Automation event, the source object passed to your event handler is an AutomationElement. For example, if you have subscribed to focus-changed events, the source passed to your AutomationFocusChangedEventHandler is the element that received the focus. For more information, see Subscribe to UI Automation Events.
From a Point:
If you have screen coordinates (for example, a cursor position), you can retrieve an AutomationElement by using the static FromPoint method.
From a Window Handle:
To retrieve an AutomationElement from an HWND, use the static FromHandle method.
From the Focused Control:
You can retrieve an AutomationElement that represents the focused control from the static FocusedElement property.
Answer: If you can leverage and use the Coded UI Test then go that route. Make sure to verify that your given configuration is supported.
The UI Automation Library resolves everything in the code behind. This then forces you to use a tool like UISpy to gain access to the controls internals so that you can then build out your test.
A Coded UI Test on the other hand still has code behind however it allows for the recording of steps through the given application which you are testing which will greatly increase the number of tests you can create.
Answer: UI Automation library is a low-level library. Usually, you don't want to write tests against it directly as it requires a pretty decent amount of work.
I would recommend looking at more high-level libraries. You mentioned one of them - Coded UI; another good choice would be White from TestStack. They both suits different kinds of projects. Coded UI is good when you don't want to invest a lot of efforts into your test suite. At the same time, it doesn't scale much so if you are going to write a lot of tests, you are better of choosing White.
Here I compare the two frameworks in more detail: Coded UI vs White
Answer: To complement the above responses, please look at CUITE that helps quite a bit and may be an appropriate approach for you.
I began 'rolling-my-own' 'semi-framework' using the CodedUITest library and devised a paradigm for separating the details of automation from the (C#) code.
Basically, I am creating a driver that reads what needs to be done from spreadsheet(s) where each line in it is a test step (or a pointer to a scenario in a different worksheet).
At present, incomplete, but promising, I have it working against a WPF application with partial success.
One of the main problems is that the developers neglected to identify controls uniquely and consistently.
Bey


Efficient workflow/tools for converting color images to hex arrays

Question: I would like to display 65k color animated gifs on my oled. I'm using the adafruit library for https://learn.adafruit.com/096-mini-color-oled
Now I need to convert a significant number of images to hex arrays. I found a couple of tools that can deal with monochrome images and I found this: https://www.digole.com/tools/PicturetoC_Hex_converter.php which might work for individual images, but is impractical for batch processing. I also found this, but it appears to also be intended for individual images and doesn't simply work in wine. So isn't there some linux commandline magic to do that?
Comment: You could have a look at ImageMagick. I think you want to export the image as RGB565 format. This will give you raw bytes. So you can use, for example, `xxd` to convert this to hex. Not sure what you mean with hex array.
Comment: your question is not about the arduino, so it does not belong here .... it may be a better fit at https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/
Comment: @jsotola "Arduino Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for developers of open-source hardware and software that is compatible with Arduino." - my question is about how to convert graphics to an arduino compatible format to use in programming it. IMO it's covered under questions regarding "software that is compatible with Arduino". WIth that being said, I already got my answer.
Answer: I found this plugin to be satisfactory: https://khalim19.github.io/gimp-plugin-export-layers/
It's not a single elegant command, but is quite fast and maybe can be optimized with some scripting.


How can I reformat my hard-drive?

Question: I am in Disk Utility under the Erase Tab. The Format section is grayed out even though I have my main disk selected. The only buttons active are Erase Free Space, but I want to reformat the entire disk.
Comment: What are you hoping to do after you format the disk?
Answer: If your goal is to completely wipe all data which is on your current boot disk, then follow the procedure below.

Insert the Mac OS X CD.
Restart the computer.
Immediately after the startup sound, press and hold the "C" key to start up from CD.
When the Installer screen appears, do not click Continue. Instead, choose Installer > Open Disk Utilities.
Select the hard drive to erase.
Click the Erase tab.
Select the volume format from the Volume Format pop-up menu.
Click Options.
Select the checkbox for "Zero out data". (other options also available)
Click OK.
Click Erase.

The reason to perform this procedure as described above is it removes all traces of data by securely wiping the entire disk.  This means that even with recovery tools, somebody couldn't find what was on your disk.  It's the best way to wipe a disk if you're selling/disposing of your computer or hard drive.
UPDATE: Some additional information regarding theories on multi-pass erases can be found here: http://www.howtogeek.com/115573/htg-explains-why-you-only-have-to-wipe-a-disk-once-to-erase-it/
TLDR; Its generally unnecessary with modern disk drives
Comment: I'm eager to hear the OP's response. If this is indeed his goal, your answer is a very, very good one.
Comment: The last paragraph overstates the ability of "Zero all data" to securely erase your data. If you're truly worried about your data falling into the wrong hands, you should use the 7-pass erase or—better yet—physically destroy the hard drive.
Answer: You cannot reformat the startup drive from which you booted (and from which the system is currently running). You would need to boot from a different volume, whether a different partition, or from a DVD.

How can I reformat my hard-drive?


Adding a class to the body of an inactive site using multisite

Question: I am using multisite and have made inactive one of the sites. I would like a way to add a class to the body tag of inactive sites so that I can in turn, use that class to add a note for admin to see from the front-end that the site is indeed inactive. Can the functions file be used to do this perhaps?
Answer: Yes, you can use the body_class filter. If all the sites use the same theme, you can get away with putting this in functions.php (in a child theme so your code doesn't get overwritten when the theme is updated), but if any sites have a different theme, you'll need to put it into a custom plugin (perhaps a MU plugin).
<?php
add_filter('body_class', 'wpse_299000_body_class');
function wpse_299000_body_class() {
    // check if current subsite is inactive, deleted, archived, or spammed
    $is_inactive = ms_site_check();
    // value will come back either true or false
    if($is_inactive == true) {
        // add your desired class to  - this example adds .inactive
        $classes[] = 'inactive';
    }
    // always return classes so none are taken away
    return $classes;
}
?>

You can also remove classes if needed.
Comment: Excellent. I am using the same theme for all sites so this will be great. I'm actually very surprised there was no answer anywhere else for this; seems it would be pretty handy for others. Thank you.


How to make each form accessible to each other

Question: Is there a way to make each form, (all controls, all strings, all integers inside) to make accessible from each other form ?
Answer: You just need to implement it by yourself. There is no built-in mechanism.
Create global collection of forms objects (may be static) and for every form define public properties of the members you want to share with others.
That is.
Answer: Access modifiers make the members of class accessible or non accessible from other classes. All form classes are public and accessible by other forms by default. The data member declared public are accessible through other forms(classes) and protected members are accessible by sub class. Study about access modifier could help you in making the required members accessible, Access Modifiers
Answer: There is, as the others pointed out, but do you really want to? You rarely want one form to be very dependent of another form - it can make your maintenance much harder. Figure out exactly what you need, and design the interfaces properly (perhaps you need a controller that knows how to control both forms?).


monitor port scan on the same segment

Question: if theres a port scan on the same segment and it does not reach the firewall at all, it is not detectable by anything. is there any solution to that ? maybe using the windows fw on ach workstation to monitor ? Is there a way to create maybe a user defined rule using a default windows firewall, that detects when theres many attempts to connect to the host using many ports and then create a security event?
anything like that can be enforced using gpo or something ?
Answer: Unsure of what you're asking so I will answer based on what I do understand:

if theres a port scan on the same segment and it does not reach the
  firewall at all, it is not detectable by anything.

This makes little sense. If there is a port scan on the same NETWORK and it does not reach the firewall, it is not detectable by anything? Consider the following internal network:
Network     10.10.10.0
Subnet      255.255.255.0
Router      10.10.10.1
Firewall    10.10.10.2

If I am on 10.10.10.3 and scan 10.10.10.4 my port scan may or may not be detected on the firewall depending on your configuration. Once upon a time, there was "PortMagic" port scan detector for Windows, but I would not install that on ANYTHING but a home PC. It is not a commercial tool, and even if it was, you would likely confuse your users or make them paranoid.
Secondly, attackers can mangle portscanning by using decoys, and unless you configure these automated tools properly, you're doing more harm than good. For example, if you configured an automatic block, consider I scan your machine with the IP of 10.10.10.10 with the following syntax:
nmap -sS -vvv -D 10.10.10.2,10.10.10.1 10.10.10.10

-D 10.10.10.2,10.10.10.1 these decoys that I am using will be blocked by 10.10.10.10 which means that machine will be offline. Just because a machine is being portscanned, doesn't mean someone WILL hack that machine. It all boils down to whether or not the machine is vulnerable, and whether or not that vulnerability is EXPLOITABLE.
Think of a house. Every house has windows. Every house is vulnerable. Your house has a security guard on duty, with Rottweilers inside a fence around the perimeter. I can assure you that your house is not exploitable. At least not as easy as the house without any protections. However, even this analogy is not that great because some houses have more windows than others. What is behind those windows? (e.g. what services are you running that someone can exploit.)
Answer: In short, you will have to use a packet sniffer in order to detect traffic that is not destined for your computer. This requires that your network interface be set in 'monitor' mode in order to take advantage of the way networks route packets. Not all wireless cards can do this, you will have to see if yours is compatible.
Two examples of network sniffers are Wireshark and tcpdump.

If you wanted to go one step further, use an IDS like Snort, as shown in these network topology examples. This would be the optimal way for you to identify and protect against malicious traffic destined for your network.

monitor port scan on the same segment


How does Hidden Potential work?

Question: The Second Wave feature offers the following option:

Hidden Potential
As a soldier is promoted, their stats will increase randomly.

This is fairly straight forward, however I'm looking for detailed specifics on the feature. More specifically:

Does the range of a possible stat increase depend on the characters class and rank?
What is the range of possible stat increase at each level?
Answer: Soldiers rank and class do not factor into Hidden Potential. When using Hidden Potential, your soldiers receive random boost in addition to their normal class specific boost. In addition, there is a chance they may get boost to their health even if they would not normally get one.
There is no currently known hard values, but, from personal experience, addition seems to range between 0 to 10 points.

How does Hidden Potential work?


Is there really no manual for Bitcoin Core?

Question: This is not the first time I'm desperately searching for Bitcoin Core help and finding none, but look at this: https://bitcoincore.org/en/doc/0.20.0/
That's the closest thing to a "manual" I can find. But it's about RPC commands. I've gone through their entire damn website (both ones, in fact) and made numerous web searches but find nothing resembling a manual. Where is the manual? Is there a manual?
Right now, I'm trying to get official descriptions of these two configuration options:

blocknotify
walletnotify

They are not mention anywhere on that page, and seemingly nowhere else officially. Am I supposed to guess what they mean and try to piece together information from ancient questions asked by random people online? How is anyone supposed to get a Bitcoin payment system running and actually use Bitcoin when there is no manual and a hundred BIPs are released per week?
The lack of information has caused countless of my projects to never get off the ground. I don't understand the mentality that a lot of people have that things are somehow "obvious" or "don't need a manual". Especially not when it's for a crucial piece of software which we're supposed to use to revolutionize the world.
Comment: https://manpages.debian.org/testing/bitcoind/bitcoind.1.en.html
Answer: There is a manual documenting both examples. The man page for bitcoind.
man bitcoind shows me:
       -blocknotify=<cmd>

              Execute command when the best block changes (%s in cmd is replaced by block hash)
        ....
       -walletnotify=<cmd>

              Execute command when a wallet transaction changes (%s in cmd is replaced by TxID)

They're really not that hard to use.
Note that this machine runs a slightly older version of bitcoind. Newer versions support %w for the name of the wallet, as bitcoind now supports multiple wallets, in addition to %s for the transaction ID.
Comment: So I'm forced to read the manual locally, and only if I run Linux? That's... interesting.
Comment: not found......
Answer: Most of the documentation about configuration options and RPCs can be found within the software itself.
Both bitcoind and bitcoin-qt have -help and -help-debug startup options. These will print out all of the configuration options and their descriptions.
bitcoin-qt additionally displays this information in Help > Command line options
For RPCs, you can use the help RPC to list all available RPCs. Doing help <command> will show the help text for that particular command. This help text will include a description of what the RPC does, the options, and what to expect in the result.
Answer: There is man bitcoind but there is also bitcoin-cli help or bitcoin-cli help <command> which can give you more detail. Bitcoincore.org also has explanations of all RPC calls: https://bitcoincore.org/en/doc/0.19.0/rpc/blockchain/getblockfilter/
and more info.


SSH, Kerberos, AD: how / where to config /etc/pam.d/password-auth?

Question: I have a CentOS 6 machine here and want to give SSH access for users from another forest, which is trusted. I got a temporary workaround, which is:
1) change content in /etc/pam.d/vncserver to
auth include password-auth

2) add these two lines /etc/pam.d/password-auth
auth        sufficient    pam_krb5.so use_first_pass realm=NEW.DOMAIN.NET
password    sufficient    pam_krb5.so use_authtok realm=NEW.DOMAIN.NET

so it looks that way:
%PAM-1.0
This file is auto-generated.
User changes will be destroyed the next time authconfig is run.
auth        required      pam_env.so
auth        sufficient    pam_unix.so nullok try_first_pass
auth        requisite     pam_succeed_if.so uid >= 500 quiet
auth        sufficient    pam_krb5.so use_first_pass
auth        sufficient    pam_krb5.so use_first_pass realm=NEW.DOMAIN.NET
auth        required      pam_deny.so

account     required      pam_unix.so broken_shadow
account     sufficient    pam_localuser.so
account     sufficient    pam_succeed_if.so uid < 500 quiet
account     [default=bad success=ok user_unknown=ignore] pam_krb5.so
account     required      pam_permit.so

password    requisite     pam_cracklib.so try_first_pass retry=3 type=
password    sufficient    pam_unix.so sha512 shadow nis nullok try_first_pass use_authtok
password    sufficient    pam_krb5.so use_authtok
password    sufficient    pam_krb5.so use_authtok realm=NEW.DOMAIN.NET
password    required      pam_deny.so

session     optional      pam_keyinit.so revoke
session     required      pam_limits.so
session     [success=1 default=ignore] pam_succeed_if.so service in crond quiet use_uid
session     required      pam_unix.so
session     optional      pam_krb5.so

3) add new domain name to /etc/krb5.conf
4) restart SSH daemon
--> Works fine, but after each system-config-authentication (authconfig -update_all) the changes from 2) are overwritten (undone) and the SSH-connection is refused then.
My question is where to add the additional new domain to keep it working permanently. A simple substitution won't work, as the old domain / forest is still in use too.
Just adding the new domain just to /etc/krb5.so won't do the trick, as then it only checks the default domain, which is not "NEW.DOMAIN.NET". Any idea is welcome...
Regards, Thomas
Answer: You can use FreeIPAs AD synchronization feature for this. It is not really the same but does the same job and is way easier to manage and control.


what columns to include in the index to improve the performance of the following update?

Question: I have the following update:
  UPDATE dbo.fees
  SET amount = @amount,
   currencyCode = @currencyCode,
   feeType = @feeType,
   countryCode = @countryCode,
   gatewayCode = @gatewayCode,
   programAP = @programAP,
   programED = @programED,
   programEX = @programEX,
   mandatory = @mandatory
  WHERE feeID = @feeID  and endDate = @endDate
  and programAP = @programAP and programED = @programED and programEX = @programEX
  and (countryCode = @countryCode or countryCode IS NULL)
   and (gatewayCode = @gatewayCode or gatewayCode IS NULL)

this is the table definition:
CREATE TABLE [dbo].[fees] (
[ID]            INT              IDENTITY(1,1)   NOT NULL,
[feeID]         INT                              NOT NULL,
[startDate]     DATETIME                         NOT NULL,
[endDate]       DATETIME                             NULL,
[amount]        DECIMAL(10,2)                        NULL,
[currencyCode]  CHAR(3)                              NULL,
[feeType]       CHAR(1)                              NULL,
[countryCode]   CHAR(2)                              NULL,
[gatewayCode]   CHAR(3)                              NULL,
[programAP]     BIT                                  NULL,
[programEX]     BIT                                  NULL,
[programED]     BIT                                  NULL,
[mandatory]     BIT                                  NULL  CONSTRAINT [DF_fees_mandatory] DEFAULT ((0)),
CONSTRAINT   [PK_fees]  PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED    ([ID] asc) WITH FILLFACTOR = 90)

this is the index I intend to create in order to improve the performance of the update.
create nonclustered index i_feed2 on dbo.fees  (feeID ,programAP,programED,programEX,endDate) include (countryCode,gatewayCode )
with(data_compression=page,online=on) on [NONCLUSTERED_INDEXES]

A question came to my mind though:
what sort of data analysis should I do, to identify which of these columns would be better in the index or in the include part? Plus, the order of the columns in the index, is there any starting point as to find out, for this query in particular, or other queries that might hit this table, the best order of the columns?
There are no other indexes on this table.
I cannot change neither the table definition nor the update statement, but I can add indexes.
the solution
On this occasion though, even after adding the index as planned, while monitoring the execution and using the very helpful procedure sp_blitzcache
that I contacted the third party company requesting them to alter the procedure accordingly (adding a with recompile and sort out the updates as described in the comments and the accepted answer)
sp_blitzcache in action:
Answer: I fail to see how included columns can be anything but overhead for an UPDATE. If you think about it... Included columns are there to eliminate the lookup for each row. But you still have to get to the row (do the lookup) in order to modify it for an update. And every time a column is in an index (included or key) this value have to be updated (in addition to the actual data) when a modification occurs.
Answer: I'd start with keeping the index to the columns that would assist the WHERE clause but not be included in the modified columns.
CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX idx ON  [dbo].[fees](feeID,endDate)

You don't have any VARCHARS so an UPDATE won't alter the CLUSTERED INDEX hierarchy and not require a modification to the NON Clustered Index.
The UPDATE statement is overwriting Values with the same value (this generates unnecessary overhead if the columns live in additional indexes). If you change your UPDATE statement to
UPDATE dbo.fees
  SET amount = @amount,
   currencyCode = @currencyCode,
   feeType = @feeType,
   countryCode = @countryCode,
   gatewayCode = @gatewayCode,
   mandatory = @mandatory
  WHERE
   feeID = @feeID
   and endDate = @endDate
  and programAP = @programAP
  and programED = @programED
  and programEX = @programEX
  and (countryCode = @countryCode or countryCode IS NULL)
   and (gatewayCode = @gatewayCode or gatewayCode IS NULL)

Then you could introduce  programAP, programED and programEX to the Index without incurring Index Update overhead.
Once you're happy with your UPDATE statement and you have a list of columns for your index, the first key column to include should be the one with the most varied number of values. Statistics for an index are only based on the first column of the index, and you want to help SQL narrow down to the smallest sub-set of rows possible. The rest is down to experimenting in your environment.
Answer: I would rather suggest following non clustered index:
create nonclustered index i_feed2
on dbo.fees
(
feeID,
endDate,
programAP,
programED,
programEX,
countryCode,
gatewayCode
)
include
(
amount,
currencyCode,
feeType,
mandatory
)

Including all filter conditions in where clause as index columns would make the index more selective,though some storage cost increases. Adding fields selected or updated as include column(covering index) will remove RID lookup and would create index seek, which performs better than index scan.
I would give priority to performance over storage increase, as storage is cheap these days but we cannot compromise on performance.
If the table data is extremely high(say 10 millions or more) and often used in queries,would also suggest you to partition the table on one of the date fields, e.g., endDate and include this column in the clustered index too (e.g., endDate,ID).This will make the data search even more selective, as only one partition has to be referred for data search in many cases(using endDate as first columns in filter, wherever possible)


what is the meaning of the Hebrew phrase " Yehi or" (translated as let there be light) in Gen. 1:3?

Question: I have difficulty understanding what is the actual meaning of the Hebrew word "Or". The confusion I have is, since the preceding jussive verb "Yehi" indicates a dynamic condition, when it is used along with "Or" does it mean that the light took a new form to exist? I'm not sure if there is even a view like that. Can you please enlighten me of its meaning grammatically?
Comment: Possible duplicate of [What is the meaning of "Let" in the phrase "Let there be light"?](https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/32527/what-is-the-meaning-of-let-in-the-phrase-let-there-be-light)
Answer: Robert Young in his 1862 Literal Bible renders the text :

and God saith, `Let light be;' and light is. Genesis 1:3 YLT.

This translation seems to me to allow of an absent word to be understood :
"Let light be (here)."
And if so, then a further understanding may be allowed, that light is already elsewhere. Then let light be here also.
This agrees with what is later revealed in John 1 : 4 of the Word from the beginning.

In him was life; and the life was the light of men. John 1:4 KJV.

If Life is in him who is the Word from the beginning, and if that uncreated Life is uncreated Light. Then let light (of a created kind) be within the creation, also.
This demonstrates the profound spirituality of the opening chapter of Genesis, that it is not a technical description of manufacture but a deeply mysterious expression of what creation is, in and of itself.
Comment: Except apparently your interpretation is taken out of context by some to mean that the sun was already created but the light had not penetrated onto the preexistent earth @NigelJ. This is problematic for many other reasons. I can walk through your explanation but it so easily can be misconstrued especially since you have so many qualifiers, if this, then that, then the other.
Comment: and it can't be both? Rather shouldn't it be both? If it's spiritual and God in His inspiration touches upon creation, shouldn't it be true, because by your admission it doesn't have to be or it's not? The Bible wasn't written by men about God, it was God who inspired the Bible for men. And what baffles me is that if the words need to be grossly reinterpreted why use the Bible at all? @NigelJ
Comment: It doesn't matter if we have the answer, it was light. Maybe the whole electromagnetic spectrum or something else. We are talking here about days not millions or billions of years because if you noticed the plants were created before the sun and no plant can exist without any light for so many years. The sun, moon and stars (all lights not gaseous or rocky spheres) came on day four and so the moon is not a reflector but a light in and of itself. This according to the Bible. The Bible sure, isn't a textbook on science but when it touches on science it's absolutely true.
Comment: The question is about the grammatical meaning of a Hebrew construction. Your analysis of a 1000 years younger Greek text, and the attached sermon, are entirely out of place.
Answer: אור is a simple noun meaning "light." יהי simply means "there is" or "it happened" or "he is." God's declaration "there is light" (properly translated into English "let there be light" or maybe even better, "may there be light") is followed by "ויהי אור" ("and [consequently] light was"—the ו or waw in front of the verb יהי makes it past-tense in this second instance), and simply expresses God's will concerning the existence of light: He wants it to be true that "there is light," and so declares the existence of light to be true: the declaration itself is what brings about the reality. (Analogously, we Catholics believe much the same about Jesus' words at the Last Supper concerning the bread and wine and His body and blood.) The dynamic or contingent aspect is the existence or non-existence of light, the former of which God wills to be true, and which hence becomes true.
Comment: I'm not sure I follow the relevance nor the importance of the last paragraph. It doesn't seem relevant. Certainly the first part was very clearly articulated in contrast.
Comment: There is controversy over the real function of _waw_. Robert Young deals with this extensively and competently in the prefaces to his Literal Bible.
Comment: @NigelJ Semitic linguistics has progressed since Young.
Comment: @NigelJ I don't mean the waw makes it past tense as in the form of the word makes it mean something else, but functionally in the sentence: "God said, Let there be light," must followed by past tense if the former is an expression of will for light to be. It's just that Hebrew uses the same verb to express both whereas in English we must differentiate: in Hebrew there is no past or future tense.
Answer: The dynamic 'condition' (as 'Theo' wrote) included in the verbal form IEI depends not from its link with the term AUR ('light'), but, from the peculiar meaning belonging to the generating conceptual root.
In fact, it hasn't – like many think – the meaning of 'to be', but, instead, 'to become', 'to happens'. Whilst 'to be' may bear some static factor ('I was a doctor'), the verb 'to become' bears it not ('I became a doctor', 'I happened to be a doctor').
This indicates us that the creation of light was a progressive creation, not an immediate one (like – for one analogical example - the punctual leprosy broken out on the Uzziah's forehead, appeared during his rage against the priests [2 Chr 26:19]).
In every case, we have to remember that the Genesis' creation sequence describes events as they would have been seen by human observers had they been present. So, from the viewpoint of an conjectural observer of these, the earth light-system reached the optimal condition - that we also today are accustomed to see – only gradually.
A better manner to translate the passage is: "God said: "Let Light happens!" Then, Light happened to be."
Answer: Je pense souvent qu'on pourrait imaginer un metteur en scène disant «Lumière !» et alors  le technicien allume les lumières, ou braque le projecteur.
De même un chirurgien demande de la lumière à un de ses assistants.
In english with Google :
I often think we could imagine a director saying "Light!" and then the technician turns on the lights, or points the projector.
Likewise, a surgeon requests light from one of his assistants.
Answer: יְהִ֣י  - (Yehi) is qal imperfect 3rd person singular jussive with a apocopated ending of the being verb היה (hayah).  The jussive gives it the meaning "let there be."
א֑וֹר - (Or) is the noun meaning light.
Here's a lexical definition of Or.

אוֹר (ʾôr): n.masc.; ≡ Str 216; TWOT 52a—1. LN 14.36–14.52 light, i.e., that which is contrasted to darkness (Ge 1:3), note: in some contexts with the associative meaning of guidance, health, life, prosperity, enlightened judgment, and other positive things; 2. LN 1.26–1.33 sun, i.e., the orb in the daytime sky giving bright light and heat (Job 37:21); 3. LN 14.36–14.52 sunshine, light of day, i.e., daylight in contrast to the dark of night (2Ki 7:9); 4. LN 14.15–14.16 lightning, i.e., the bright, destructive spikes that precede thunder (Hos 6:5); 5. LN 67.73–67.77 unit: אוֹר הַ־ בֹּקֶר (ʾôr hǎ- bō·qěr)2 dawn, i.e., the time when light of day first appears (Jdg 16:2), note: Ge 44:3; Jer 31:35; 1Sa 29:10 may be interp as 239, q.v.; 6. LN 58.14–58.18 unit: אוֹר פָּנֶה (ʾôr pā·ně(h)) bright countenance, formally, light of the face, i.e., an appearance of the face that shows positive, happy attitude (Job 29:24; Pr 16:15); 7. LN 22.42–22.47 unit: אוֹר פָּנֶה (ʾôr pā·ně(h)) favor, formally, light of the face, i.e., favorable circumstances, and relief from trouble and danger (Ps 4:7[EB 6]; 44:4[EB 3])

Swanson, J. (1997). Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament) (electronic ed.). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
Answer: Peace.
What is being said here in Genesis 1:3 is that God IS light.
And saying is the Elohim, "He is light"….that is, God is light.
He is not "becoming" light but is unchanging light. It is a statement of His eternal nature to mankind whose foolish heart was darkened.   We are the ones to become light (and there was light) as He was, is, and will always be light. Man has changed but God does not.
From Interlinear Scripture Analyzer:

We know this looking through the lens of 1st John 1:5.
This is the message which we have heard of Him (Jesus who is the Beginning) and declared unto us that God is Light (the statement in Genesis 1:3).
If we walk in the light (and there was light….as we become light), we have fellowship with one another and blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.   We walk in light with Him.

1 John 1:5-7 KJV (5)  This then is the message which we have heard of
  him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no
  darkness at all. (6)  If we say that we have fellowship with him, and
  walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: (7)  But if we walk in
  the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another,
  and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

This statement (that God is light) is in response to the earth becoming without form (that is, without righteousness….there is none righteous) and void of understanding (there is none that understand).
Darkness was upon the face of the deep….darkness upon the heart of mankind.  The Beginning….Jesus Christ…the "Face" of the waters…declares that God is light to us who have become "without form and void".  The earth BECAME without form and void as mankind has turned away from his Creator.
Genesis 1:1-5 KJV
(1)  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
(2)  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
(3)  And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Mankind has become vain in their imaginations (without form = no righteousness) and their foolish heart was darkened (darkness was upon the face of the deep).

Romans 1:18-22 KJV (18)  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven
  against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth
  in unrighteousness;

They have no knowledge of God….

(19)  Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for
  God hath shewed it unto them.

….even though the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that made (God created the visible heavens and the earth that clearly represent His invisible qualities to mankind).

(20)  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world
  are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even
  his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: (21)
  Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God,
  neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and
  their foolish heart was darkened. (22)  Professing themselves to be
  wise, they became fools,

But now mankind (the earth has become without form….without righteousness and void of the knowledge of God) needs to receive His knowledge for all have turned away

Romans 3:9-12 KJV (9)  What then? are we better than they? No, in no
  wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are
  all under sin; (10)  As it is written, There is none righteous, no,
  not one: (11)  There is none that understandeth, there is none that
  seeketh after God. (12)  They are all gone out of the way, they are
  together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not
  one.

When we hear the Son of God giving us the knowledge, the light shines with our very own hearts and shows us this is indeed the Son Jesus Christ whom we are to hear in contrast with the hearing of the words of false prophets who are preaching their son…. "another Jesus" the antichrist (the instead-of  the true Christ)…and their private interpretations of the Scriptures.

2 Corinthians 4:6 KJV (6)  For God, who commanded the light to shine
  out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
  knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The light shines in a darkened place (the heart) and the day dawns as the bright and morning star arises within our very own hearts when we hear the Voice of the Son from Heaven as He opens up the Scriptures to us.  He gives us the knowledge of God.

2 Peter 1:17-21 KJV (17)  For he received from God the Father honour
  and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent
  glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. (18)  And
  this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in
  the holy mount. (19)  We have also a more sure word of prophecy;
  whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth
  in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your
  hearts: (20)  Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is
  of any private interpretation. (21)  For the prophecy came not in old
  time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved
  by the Holy Ghost.

Not so with false prophets who speak their private interpretations of the Scriptures.
They have to rely upon their performance of outward, visible signs as they proclaim He is now within our hearts by them.
False Christs and false prophets (who are preaching their "Jesus" the false Christ) have to show us great signs (performing outward, visible signs of supposed inward realities... "behold, He is in the secret chamber") and wonders (flattery spoken for man's admiration in mind) to deceive and fascinate us into following them.

Matthew 24:23-27 KJV (23)  Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo,
  here is Christ, or there; believe it not. (24)  For there shall arise
  false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and
  wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the
  very elect. (25)  Behold, I have told you before. (26)  Wherefore if
  they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth:
  behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.

The Son of man's presence ("coming" = presence) is much more effective upon the heart.  The rays of the morning star/sun comes out of the east and shoots toward the west (in the darkness where the sun had previously gone down).  His words are much more enlightening and we know that it is Him speaking to us.

(27)  For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even
  unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

While we have the light with us, we are walk in the light as God is light.  Walk in the light, lest darkness come upon us if we continue to walk in darkness:  in envy, strife and wrath at what we hear Him saying.

John 12:35-40 KJV (35)  Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while
  is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness
  come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he
  goeth. (36)  While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be
  the children of light. These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did
  hide himself from them. (37)  But though he had done so many miracles
  before them, yet they believed not on him: (38)  That the saying of
  Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath
  believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been
  revealed?

If one walks in darkness…rejecting His words of the knowledge of God, then there is the judgment where one cannot then believe and go into understand.

(39)  Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said
  again, (40)  He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart;
  that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their
  heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

This is what Jesus meant when He said to "take heed" on how we hear.  We hear His words...the Word of Truth...which do not align with the words of many preachers.
Those who have (faith in what they hear), it shall be given unto him.  More understanding shall be given him. Whosoever does not have, even that which he thought he had will be taken from him. Faith that he thought he had will be taken away:  "therefore they could not believe" because they will have rejected the words of the true Christ in order to keep the private interpretations of the Scriptures of fleshly-minded men.

Luke 8:18 KJV (18)  Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever
  hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be
  taken even that which he seemeth to have.


Saving value of a selection option in comment form as comment meta

Question: In a plugin that I am writing I need to let user choose an option from a dropdown list before they post a comment. I used the comment_form action and inserted a drop down into the comment form.
/**
 * Modify the comment to add our custom left and right dropdown
 */
function modify_comment_form($post_id) {
    echo "
    Choose your side:
    <select id='tallytree_side' name='tallytree_side'>
        <option selected='selected' value='neutral'>Neutral Comment</option>
        <option value='left_answer'>" . $this->get_left_answer() . "</option>
        <option value='right_answer'>" . $this->get_right_answer() . "</option>
    </select>";
}
add_action('comment_form', 'modify_comment_form');

Which looks like this:

Now I just need to be able to save the value of this dropdown list when the comment is posted as a meta data of this particular comment. Note that this is a plugin and I dont want to modify core wordpress files as suggested in a tutorial here. I found a relevant discussions on the wordpress forum but I still could not find the answer I was looking for.
How can I save the selected option value as a comment meta in wordpress database?
Do I need to use AJAX for this or can this be achieved by simply using an action or filter that I could use to retrieve the value of the dropdown menu?
Comment: possible duplicate of [Add Comment Custom Field](http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/56775/add-comment-custom-field)
Comment: I dont think it is exact duplicate. But it did help me understand a bit more what I needed to do to process custom fields in the comment form. Thanks!
Answer: You can use the function update_user_meta for logged in users and the php function setcookie for the visitors. Here is a start how to work with update_user_meta
You can run this function on submission of the form or by running it by AJAX, i would recommend you to run it with AJAX.
function wpse_update_user_commentform() {

    /**
     * Get values from the selected
     * Dropdown as tha variable $side
     * Change this to your dropdown name
    */

    $side = $_POST['dropdown'];

    $comment_id = get_comment_ID();

    // Update the comment meta "comment_side" to the selected value
    update_comment_meta( $comment_id, 'comment_side', $side );

}

Comment: Why do you want to add user meta data? We got a dedicated comments and comments meta table.
Comment: Thank you for your response. As I asked in the question I wanted to save the data as comment meta. Please edit your answer to save for comment meta instead of user and I will accept it.


Scalable ruby application

Question: I am java developer and heard a lot about ruby. My real question is can we develop large scale enterprise (web) application in ruby ? Because I heard that ruby is good for small application, but like java we can't develop large scale scalable (web) application in ruby.
Answer: In Ruby? Sure - for most meanings of "enterprise". When you're talking about ruby and web apps, chances are you're talking about Ruby On Rails, or Merb (which is the same thing from v3.0 onwards). With either framework, ways to scalability are fairly well understood.
I suspect that you could probably still achieve higher levels of throughput for a given hardware configuration with a Java solution. Costs for additional hardware could very likely be more than offset by reduced cost to deliver a solution with a Ruby framework - as a language it's typically much more concise than Java.
The more "enterprise" and "scalable" you need your app to be, the more you're going to have to work to remove bottlenecks - just like you would with a Java app.
New Relic have quite a few useful items on the subject, and Googling for "scaling rails" yields a lot more.
Answer: This actually depends on what you mean by "large scale" and "enterprise".
There is a book "Enterprise Integration with Ruby" about a lot of things you'd do in an enterprise settings. The book recommends low ceremony solutions and out of the box thinking. I like it.
Answer: In a "large scale scalable (web) application" size, you (almost) always depend on DB scaling and heavy caching, not the framework itself, so it doesn't matter what language you use.
Answer: You really are asking two questions here:
1) Is Ruby enterprise ready compared to Java?
Ruby has access to all the Java libraries using JRuby if need be, but Ruby is definitely lacking a proper "pure" Ruby managed application server environment like JBoss, Weblogic or Websphere. (+1 for Java)
2) How does Ruby scale compared to Java?
Most scalability is related to finding bottlenecks faster, and in Ruby you will develop much faster than in Java, so hits the bottlenecks a lot faster, allowing you to optimize your application faster. For example, you will be able to optimize your database much sooner with a Ruby on Rails application compared to a Java application. (+1 for Ruby)
Answer: Yes, it is just rumor. I wouldn't worry about it too much. It used to be much less stable, but it has gotten way better in the last few years.
Answer: Most answers we find on the web are FUD and its hard to find the answers with the appropriate context. A multitude of people have hitched their wagon to one eco-system or the other and will justify their decision using whatever logic and statistics they can. The best you can do is assemble a team of bright/motivated people and they will choose the software stack that best empowers them to succeed. If we look at the web-sites that have had much success over the past 10 years, we'll find the languages to be varied. Having said that, the number one priority in every startup and even when working in large enterprise organizations was time to market. While many people are looking at scalability and acting on their findings, some guy using so-called less than enterprise grade software is delivering a solution to the market. If you have a moment, checkout Paul Grahams essays. He provides some good insight into this topic. He was very successful using Lisp, now who would even think about that in this discussion? The point he makes in his essay is speed and responsiveness to change. Even Twitter as popular as it has become is a mix of Scala and Ruby. My perpsective is that in Silicon Valley to many teams are trying to deliver using only a single language, and that what should instead occur is using the appropriate language for the specific team, and problem at hand. If you are developing product into enterprise entities you'll be very limited on what your software stack can be, but if you are developing a customer facing web application, the world is your oyster! You want to choose the stack that lets you and your team go from concept to reality ASAP! GOOD LUCK!. OVER.

Scalable ruby application


What if the furnace doesn't have a C wire connection

Question: I have a 25+ year old York Forced Air electric furnace, want to hook up the new Honeywell WIFI stat, there is no C wire connection in the Furnace itself, and some instructions have indicated using the B terminal - which has the 24V wire from the Transformer connected to it.  The confusing part of the Furnace wiring diagram shows that the R terminal is also connected to the secondary side of the transformer to what looks like the Common wire, and here's where it's confusing me, that wire is going to Ground as well? So can the B terminal be used as the C wire to the stat?
Here's the wiring diagram. There's no AC or Heat Pump, purely used for heating.
Comment: Isn't this a mega-duplicate by now?
Comment: Model Number: N2AHD10A06HNA
Answer: Based on the schematic, the B terminal should be able to be used as a C.  Simply extend a wire from B, and connect the C terminal of the thermostat to it. It should look something like this...

Though since you said you don't have A/C hooked up, you won't have the Y wire connected.
Comment: nice overlay onto the schematic
Answer: It's a common thing on the older electric furnaces, just use a good voltmeter and check the reading between R and B if you get 24 volts, then B is actually the C terminal you are looking for or Common as the C indicates. I had this issue installing one of the new Micro electronic thermostats on a rooftop unit and needed an extra wire to install this thermostat. Thanfully whoever installed it ran extra wires.