are projects with high developer turn over rate really a bad thing?

Question: I've inherited a lot of web projects that experienced high developer turn over rates.   Sometimes these web projects are a horrible patchwork of band aid solutions.  Other times they can be somewhat maintainable mosaics of half-done features each built with a different architectural style.  Everytime I inherit these projects, I wish the previous developers could explain to me why things got so bad.
What puzzles me is the reaction of the owners (either a manager, a middle man company, or a client).  They seem to think, "Well, if you leave, I'll find another developer, because you're expendable."   Or they think, "Oh, it costs that much money to refactor the system?   I know another developer who can do it at half the price.  I'll hire him if I can't afford you."   I'm guessing that the high developer turn over rate is related to the owner's mentality of "My ideas are always great ideas, and if you don't agree, I'll find another (possibly cheaper) developer who agrees with me and does what I want".  For the owners, the approach seems to work because their business is thriving.  Unfortunately, it's no fun for developers because they go AWOL after 3-4 months of working with poor code, strict timelines, and insufficient client feedback.
So my question is the following:
Are the following symptoms of a project really such a bad thing for business?

high developer turn over rate
poorly built technology - often a patchwork of different and inappropriately used architectural styles
owners without a clear roadmap for their web project, and they request features on a whim

I've seen numerous businesses prosper with the symptoms above.  So as a programmer, even though my instincts tell me the above points are terrible, I need to take a step back and ask, "are things really that bad in the grand scheme of things?"  If not, I will re-evaluate my approach to these projects..ie. Do I build long term solutions or band-aid solutions?
** At the risk of this post being closed as non-programming related, I'd like to argue that I think it is programming related because answers to this question will influence the way a developer approaches a project.  He will have a better feel for how far in advance he should plan his development (ie. build short term or long term solution) knowing he may quit at any moment.
Answer: All three symptoms are bad.  They really are a bad thing for business.  That being said:
Software development exists to make tools.  That's it.  It's not an end, in and of itself - you're a tool maker.
There are very successful businesses that operate using poor tools.  They may not be run as well as they should be, but good results can, and often do, come from bad tools.  Also remember, though, that eliminating your three symptoms will likely make the company even more effective, especially in the long term.
Comment: If the only *uses* software (and is not in the business of *making* software), then it only has to be good enough to support whatever it is the company really does.
Answer: High dev turnover is a symptom, not a cause. The cause is bad management. If those businesses prosper, it's usually in the short term and usually precedes a buyout, a merger, or an outright failure. I've seen it happen over and over.
Comment: cannot up vote this enough, unfortunately I would assume not many managers read stackoverflow
Answer: If you can afford - run. There are bad companies out there but there are good ones too - at least better than the mess you describe.
Answer: All those 3 things are not good let me focus on turnover.
I'm seeing it happen right now. management/company are being cheap so they don't care much about the team, techonology or process, just the bottomline. So in turn (eventually) team members don't care about the project, just THEIR bottomline. After several months, they decide it's not worth the stress and move on. We are a small team of 6 developers, this year 3 people want out and it's just July. 2 people came in, one more is coming. Seems all we're doing is transition and project turnover. Team does not mature and is ineffective. our customer senses this, and instead of giving the team more projects (more money for company) they limit it to certains apps. I wonder when management will realize that being cheap is costly!
Answer: If I may take a Devil's Advocate view on this for a moment:

Some people like a challenge.  Achieving extremely difficult things are very exciting for some people and there are some developers that enjoy finding those uber hard problems and work on those.  Having something difficult to do appeals to some people.
The turnover means that each time someone is starting from scratch rather than retaining all the ideas and thoughts that the previous developer had in building out the software, whatever it was intended to do.  Sometimes multiple heads can make a good thing.  After all, how many people developed Windows 7? ;)
The poorly built point is where someone may think, "Oh, I can shine here by fixing some of this stuff," and at times it can work for a while.  Ka-ching!
The lack of a roadmap and almost advocating the "Cowboy coding" style may appeal to those that want great autonomy and just move to their own beat.  After all, who needs methodologies and best practices when one has supernatural powers to use to make this awesome stuff that will take no time at all?
There is the question of what is the root cause of the turn over rate for developers?  Is it just that the project is killing developers or the pay is so bad almost anywhere else would be better or something else?  Just something to ponder here as there can be many a way to get rid of a developer, both literally and figuratively.

To be serious about this for a moment, there are some people that do enjoy high pressure situations and others that want to avoid them at all costs.  Most people are somwhere between the two extremes.  Where do you think you fall on that scale though?
Comment: I like high pressure situations only if my clients appreciate my efforts.  "That's amazing! No one was ever able to fix that problem, let alone do it in 1 night" is a much better reception than "Pff...that's what I pay you to do...so did you check out that new photocopier we got?".
Answer: I'll address each of your three points in turn.  High turnover in any industry is considered bad for business and a management problem.  However, I've read several books about corporate politics and cultures and the effect those have on the corporate bottom line.  One book I read studied several major corporations over a 20-year span.  It found that poisonous cultures grow slowy and tend to be "lagging indicators" of bottom line performance problems.  It also found that when some of the companies were able to hire new CEO's who ultimately "turned the ship around", it took 10 - 15 YEARS to stop the bleeding.  So in a VERY big picture view, yes turnover is poisonous, although it truly is a symptom of the larger problem.  A symptom that should not be ignored. (Even though it usually is ignored for long periods of time.  Ever notice that it takes HR a very long time to realize that a department's turnover might be tied to a bad manager?)
Poorly built technical infrastructure - or products that are sold to customers are obviously bad for the bottom line.  I think that only non-technical people fail to understand this.  Of course there is a range between "not optimal but works" and "barely works as long as you restore the database once a week it gets us by".  I think the reason this happens is that the cost portion of the "holy trinity" is always chosen in favor of quality.  In my experience this is guaranteed to be a hard and fast rule.  If management has to choose between cost, quality and schedule, quality is always the first tossed to the wayside.
The problem of owners without a clear roadmap and feature creep are a symptom of lack of business discipline.  Feature creep costs money.  And when it's bad enough, it can actually prevent anything from being completed.
Answer: In general, a very high turn over rate for employees isn't good in any company. When it comes to software, high developer turn over is bad because of all the tutoring that has to be done for the new one, and the "big picture" knowledge that goes out of the door. So if software is important for the business, high turnover rate is bad for business.
Only doing requested features without a roadmap is a one way path to bloatware. If you have no clear strategy, goal or purpose for a product, your only source for what to do is customer requests, which might be bad. This is so because the customers might actually not know what they want, thereby requesting features they won't use.
Answer: The interesting thing to me about your question is that you say that they are thriving as a company, so it makes me wonder if the technology is as important to them.  Maybe the problem is that they don't see the value in better technology (and they might be right in their case, I'm not sure what kind of business they are).
Comment: I've worked for companies in the real-estate industry that had such high margins that they could screw around endlessly and still make a ton of money.
Answer: From one perspective, the attitude(s) you're quoting are understandable.  Software development isn't cheap, and most people/businesses are trying to save money everywhere they can.  However I think they're usually shooting themselves in the foot with this sort of behavior.
One suggestion for dealing with this is to get a copy of The Mythical Man Month and read the section on why adding more programmers to a late project will only make it later (it's the title - and second (in my copy) - essay).  Many of the same ideas apply to replacing a developer ... except that if you're working solo, it's likely you may as well start over, as figuring out what the previous person did may take longer than starting from scratch.  After you've read the essay, give a copy to anyone who's taking the attitude you cite and ask them to read it.  No guarantee that it will help, but it's worth a try.


hreflang tag for different design and different site?

Question: We are going to extend our business to a different language and brand (English, abc.com) rather than our local one (German, bcd.com). Whilst the content for both focuses on same subject, the design and site names differ. Can we safely use hreflang in this situation?
Answer: Since your domains are different for your English site and German site, there really is no need to use hreflang as covered here by Google. If you had a single domain for a multilingual site that served content in more than one language, then you'd want to use hreflang.
Even though the two sites will focus on the same subject, you won't run into duplicate content issues because English content is not considered to be the same as German content by search engines like Google, as discussed here by Matt Cutts: Does translated content cause a duplicate content issue?
One caveat to the above however is that you shouldn't use the same content for both sites that has only been translated by Google Translate, since it would detect that the content is the same. Instead it should be translated by a human, and as much as possible tailored to users of that language.
As a side note, it might be a good idea to specify the Geotarget for each site to Google and Bing:
Google Webmaster Tools - Geotargeting
Bing Webmaster Tools - Geotargeting
Answer: The hreflang attribute gives the language of the linked resource. You can use it on every link (a, area, link). It has nothing to do with translations by itself.
The rel attribute gives the relationship type of the link. One of the possible rel-keywords is alternate. This is kind of a special keyword, as the

[…] meaning of this keyword depends on the values of the other attributes.

One special case is:

If the alternate keyword is used with the hreflang attribute, and that attribute's value differs from the root element's language, it indicates that the referenced document is a translation.

So for any link on your German site to your English site, you should use hreflang="en". If (and only if) the linked resource is a translation of the linking resource, use rel="alternate" in addition.


Passing data from UI controller to Javasript it loses some data

Question: I am returning my data from my UI controller and I have two objects of the same type in the data which are a certain entity. You can see they both contain values and if you were to fully expand either they are assigned the correct values.

Now If you look in the javascript it loses all the values on the second entity of the same type. I am showing one of the data objects in the console

I am just wondering if anyone knows whats going on and if it is possible to pass a data object with Json that contains two entities of the same type per data objects.
Thanks!
Comment: It looks like you have preserve object references enabled in the JSON serializer. Check out https://www.newtonsoft.com/json/help/html/PreserveObjectReferences.htm.
Comment: Yes I believe you are correct. Going to look into it.
Answer: This javascript fixed my issue as it now makes the reference values look at the actual values. I know the 4 is hard coded but there are only every 4 elements in the return set and they always have the same values on them except one column so hard coded value of 4 is acceptable in this case.
<code>options.data.forEach(function (element) {
            if (element.FromCurrency.$ref == 4 && element.ToCurrency.$ref == 4) {
                element.FromCurrency = options.data.find(x => x.ToCurrency.$id = '4').ToCurrency;
                element.ToCurrency = options.data.find(x => x.ToCurrency.$id = '4').ToCurrency;
            }
            else if (element.ToCurrency.$ref == 4) {
                element.ToCurrency = options.data.find(x => x.ToCurrency.$id = '4').ToCurrency;
            }
        });
</code>


firebase domain name requirement

Question: I'm creating a mobile app. However, I'm working on the part where users can reset their password. I realize that I may need a domain name in order to complete this step. Why is that the case? Do I have to code a web version of my app as well?
Answer: When Firebase send the user a password reset email, that email contains a link to a web page where they can reset their password. By default this web page will be on <yourprojectname>.firebaseapp.com, but you may want to customize that in the Firebase console.
The page itself is auto-generated through, so you won't need to build or deploy a web site for this.
Comment: If you enter a custom domain, it is important that you actually own that domain and have it registered correctly with Firebase. Otherwise Firebase won't be able to host its auto-generated page that is in the email on the domain.
Comment: I'm on that page now where I can customize the web page which i did iput htttps:aloo.com. But when I click that link fom my email it tells me the page has been suspeneded. I'm gussing I need to do an actual domian becuase it was trying to go go to some sort of website
Comment: ok thank you for that information.

firebase domain name requirement


Final Cut Pro 10 Change clip appearance of some clips in timeline

Question: Is it possible to change the appearance of some clips in your timeline and not others?  Basically sometimes I only care about the main video and want to shrink any overlay pictures etc I may have to be as small as possible to save space, can I do this somehow?
Comment: This question is unclear to me. Do you mean if you can tread some clip different from others when you export a project?
Comment: No sorry, maybe if I give an example that will help.  I have my main video which generally I like to have larger, then lots of images overlayed which if possible I'd like to have at the smallest display setting/not show any audio track for etc.
Answer: I am pretty sure you cannot change the clip hight for a certain timeline independent. What might help a bit is when you give your stacked clips different Roles and then click the 'show subroles'. What will move the audio to the bottom under the main timeline and will leave you with the clips only. Now click the 'Focus' button for your main timeline. Then all other audio tracks will get minimized to a narrow line. However, this does not help with the clip high.


Does the doomsday argument assume that you will be born?

Question: If with every birth there is some chance c that I specifically will be born, then the number of total people born (N) does not effect the odds that I will be in the first 100 billion people. My odds of being in the first 100 billion people would be 100,000,000,000*c which is unaffected by N. In a 100 trillion person universe my odds of being in the first 100 billion would be lower than being somewhere closer to the middle, but in a 200 billion person universe my odds of being born at all are much lower. Is there a flaw somewhere in this reasoning? Does the doomsday argument assume that you will be born?
Comment: Why? It is a statistical argument, it doesn't care about you or anybody in particular.
Answer: You are already born. This is a fact, knowledge you have. You know you are in the first 100 billion people, because that is approximately the number estimated for total humans born until now.
The doomsday argument argues that, given that:

there is a finite number of humans that have been and will ever be born
principle of indifference, you are equally likely to be the x'th person as the x+1'th

With these, you can argue that with a 95% probability, you live among the last 95% of humans, so you can get an upper bound estimation on how many humans in total there will ever be.
This is important. We are interested in an upper bound. Not that we are also 95% likely to live among the first 95%, giving us a lower bound estimate on how long humanity will survive at least. But that's not what we are interested in.
You are not more likely to be in the middle than at the beginning or the end of the distribution, you are equally likely.


Software Center lists no apps under the categories

Question: Just installed 20.04.1 LTS, it worked before. ran, sudo apt install --reinstall gnome-software, but it did not fix it.
Answer: Why you want gnome-software? You will be having snap store (ubuntu software).  If u are inclined to have gnome-software, try removing and purging whole data using command sudo apt-get remove --purge gnome-software then try installing again using sudo aptitude install gnome-software.  This should solve the problem.
Comment: Thank you, this has fixed the problem. I don't know if I should want gnome-software. The reason I ran "apt install --reinstall gnome-software" was because I saw it in an old post about someone who seemed to be having a similar problem. All I was trying to do was to fix software center. Software center seems to be now replaced with an icon that looks sort of like a brief case, but works the same as the old software center. Maybe gnome was not what was installed before? Did we just fix what was installed with Ubuntu or did we get rid of the old software center and put a different one in?
Comment: From ubuntu 20.04, u have snap store (i.e. called as Ubuntu Software) in place of gnome software centre.  Sanp store deploys snaps.  gnome-store is not installed by default. You can add plugins to gnome-software to have snap functionality or flatpak functionality.  Snaps are the way ahead, so it will be prudent to have snap store, instead of gnome-software, though some may not agree.  Anyway, glad to know it helped !


Why is Karma not played as much as other supports?

Question: I never seen Karma in Solo/Duo queue. I consider her a Very Good support. She got nice CC and nice Heal, Buffs, but I don't understand why people are not playing her at all.
Comment: I've removed the second part of your question. Asking for guides is off-topic on our site. Please read the [FAQ](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/faq).
Answer: Karma is just not very suitable support, she needs farm and items to be effective. That's why most people who play her play AP carry karma mid or top.
Her early game is huge with shield and healing wave(which heals and deals dmg) and this is the build i found most effective: Start with boots or dorans ring(if you dont expect early ganks) and max shield first(dont take point in your chain skill which is E) and max Q 2nd and take E skill only when you must(i think lv15). Build your WotA(get revolver at 1st buy) and couple of dorans rings. Proceed to rabadons deathcap and rylais crystal scepter. For boots buy ionian boots of lucidity or mercury treads(since that +20 Mpen in not very needed). Other items are situational and are something like void staff, abyssal scepter etc.
For laning i suggest walking to an enemy and activating mantra, then your shield followed by q and repeat it each time you get 2nd mantra charge. If you are unable to come close to an enemy activate mantra and shield a minion near the enemy champion. Teamfighting is basically the same thing but you may want to heal your allies a few times in teamfight(well placed heavenly wave can heal all your team).
Hope this helps!
Comment: Ty for all feedback I am starting to make an idea about her and I hope to get the hang of her soon! I'm waiting for more ideas! Cyah in the game guyz.
Answer: You can try this guide for reference http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/the-comprehensive-karma-72191 This guide seems to be liked by many people. And for your previous question I've heard something about Karma not actually being that helpful as a support and would be better as an AP. I can't really give a judgement on this since I do not play this champion. I hope this helped you some.
Answer: Very few people actually know how to play her, but she is a very nice champ for baiting and such because she gets more AP damage when her HP is low.
Comment: I understand this much but her CC is weak, Sona has her ultimate which is what i consider game changing, soraka has a global heal for everyone leona has a aoe stun/slow. alot of other heroes have alot to give to there team while karma doesnt, tho i agree she is rather strong. a good shield, good aoe heal, good speed boost for her team.
Answer: It's because she is in the middle of a carry and a support, she can nuke people, and support quite well. but since she isn't one specific role, you can pick any other champion to fill either of those roles and it would be a better choice than her. They are working on her at the moment though, so be prepared to see her a lot more often.
Answer: Karma is my favorite champion in the game, so I'm glad you asked this!
There are currently a lot of cons to karma that keep people from playing her. Also, some people just dont understand her.
Karma has a very low range and an incredibly low movement speed. Her mantra only has two charges and they take awhile to replenish. When your mantra runs out in team fights, it really hinders her playing ability.
Karma just doesn't live up to the other supports or ap mids. She is a wonderful hybrid, but it's just difficult to find a time in tourney games to use her.
Answer: Actually that's a good question because I personally think that karma is a very strong support. However, most support players really like using easier to play supports (ie. Sona or Soraka). I guess the number one reason I've heard people say is because she doesn't have that much of a reliable heal considering she has to activate her ultimate in order to use it. Honestly I have no idea why she isn't played that much because she is a very good support - just look at her kit to prove it:
Q: AOE heal that also does a good amount of dmg in case of those engages bot
W: Either slow enemy or speed up ally with the potential to slow more than 1 if correct positioning
E: Huge shield with massive AP scaling that again does good dmg if used with mantra to all nearby targers
R: It's free, lets her get 6 points in other abilities and makes all of her abilities a lot stronger so really she's very good. But since she's not played in tournaments because no one is used to her, and since she's not used in tournaments, people just assume she's not good
Comment: Today i saw Voyboy top player from Team Digitans playing her in ggChronicle tournament and he was against Udyr top. Obviously Team Digitans was trolling and he lost really hard against lane udyr but even tho I noticed her potential of aoe healing/damage and form what I saw she has the most durable speed buff in the game (not including janna's passive).


Continuous extension of limiting Holomorphic function to the boundary.

Question: Let $\Omega $ be a domain in $\mathbb{C}^n$. Consider the algebra $A(\Omega)=\mathcal{C}(\overline\Omega)\cap\mathcal{O}(\Omega).$ Let $\{F_\nu\}$ be a sequence in $A(\Omega)$ such that $F_\nu(\overline{\Omega})\subseteq\overline{\mathbb{D}}$ for every $\nu\in\mathbb{Z}_+.$ Now by Montel's Theorem we know that there is a subsequence of this sequence which converges uniformly on compact sets of $\Omega.$ Let $F$ be the limit function of this subsequence then we know this is holomorphic. The question here is if this F belongs to $A(\Omega)$ or not? I mean if we can extend $F$ continuously to the boundary ?
Answer: In general no, even if $n=1$. Take for example $\Omega$ as the unit disc, let $F \in H^\infty \setminus A$ with $|F| < 1$ and let $F_\nu(z) = F( r_n z)$ where $r_n \searrow 1$.
Comment: Thanks. So in general it is not true. The sequence of hol. functions that I got has this particular property that each member of the family maps a given fixed point on the boundary to the boundary of unit disc. Does it make any difference?


Relationship between linear and angular velocity?

Question: Let us assume that car is going straight on a road with no turns, now let a observer observe it. According to the relation  v=rω there should be some angular velocity or angular displacement. But where is this angular velocity or displacement?
Comment: Related: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/616572/226902
Answer: Draw a line joining the observer and the car. The line clearly changes over time as the car moves. Set up a pair of co-ordinate axes, with the observer at the origin. At any instant $t$, the line that you drew would have some length $r(t)$ and some angular position $\theta(t)$ (the angle it makes with your chosen x-axis).
The relation $v(t)=r(t)w(t)$ is satisfied, where $w(t)=\frac{d\theta}{dt}$


Can nimbus probes access alarm history to act on trends

Question: I have a probe monitors the health of my web services.  It curls a url and ensures that the services return data.  The curl call is set to timeout in 3 seconds.  So, slow responses should fire off alarms.  However, I don't want the first timeout to be considered a severe issue.  Rather, I'd like the probe track from run-to-run how many timeouts it has seen and increase severity of the alarms accordingly.  Obviously, this can be done a custom datastore that keeps track of this info but I'm looking for a solution that is built into the Nimsoft system. Is this possible?
Answer: There is some terminology I would like to clarify. Are you talking about events or alarms?
You can customize the event thresholds on what triggers the alarm but once an event threshold is breached, an alarm is generated, at whatever level you determine.
Within the NAS, you can configure Auto-Operator rules to escalate the severity of a previously issued alarm, at customizable intervals but this does not address your issue.
You can change the setup to sample across an interval, prior to firing the alarm and this may be what you are after.


Closing stock position on Dec 30

Question: When closing a stock position on Dec 30, 2020, with T+2 settlement, is the P&L booked for 2020 or 2021? TIA.
Answer: 2020 - Settlement is an administrative operation and may depend on market (i.e. you give a US example, it is different in other countries). You SELL them on T - the fact that the paperwork transfer takes +2 should not matter.
Answer: It's no surprise but there are contradictory articles about this on the net for U.S. taxation.  Some suggest that the trade must settle this year in order to be claimed this year.
I consider Fairmark.com to be a reliable source of tax information.  Here's their take on tax selling rules:

When determining what year you sold your stock, the trade date is what matters. This is the day the transaction took place on the stock exchange.

EXCEPTION FOR LOSS FROM SHORT SALES

When you buy shares to close a short position, this purchase (like any other) has a trade date and a settlement date. The date that's used for tax purposes depends on whether you have a gain or a loss:

If you're closing the short position at a profit, the trade date controls the timing for tax purposes. In other words, we use the same rule here as when you're selling shares you own. If you're closing the short position at a loss, however, the settlement date will control.

If you have any doubt, close your trade two business days before the end of the year so that you avoid tax reporting complications.
Answer: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8949.pdf
From the instructions for form 8949:

Column (c)—Date Sold or Disposed Of
Enter in this column the date you sold or disposed of the property. Use the trade date for stocks and bonds traded on an exchange or over-the-counter market. For a short sale, enter the date you delivered the property to the broker or lender to close the short sale.
Answer: I fundamentally agree with TomTom on this one. From a legal point of view, the settlement date is irrelevant. What is important is when you take decisive action.
In the long run, however, the IRS does not really care too much which year you book your transaction, if its a matter of a day or two. They always look at the big picture. So, you can report the P&L either way and your position is defensible. If you closed the position in November and tried to book it in 2021, that would be a different story, but here with just a day or two in difference, it does not matter.
Comment: For a private transaction, such as a car or a closely held business, that might be true. For stocks on an exchange, the broker will report it on 1099-B as this year, and if your 8949 doesn't say the same, you will like Lucy "have some splainin to do".

Closing stock position on Dec 30


Does "should not have (past participle)" have the same meaning as "should have not to (verb)"?

Question: Are they the same meaning? Or grammatically it's right?
I used grammar check online but it said both are correct.
For example,

You should not have believed him.
You should have not to believe him.

Which one is correct?
Answer: 'You should have not to believe him' is ungrammatical. The example is better adjusted also.

'You should not have worked so late.' means 'You ought to have
  finished working earlier.' [usually, a friendly upbraiding]

but

'You should not have to work so late.' means 'You are being compelled
  / obliged to work beyond a reasonable time.' [usually, a comment that
  too much is being expected of you, though it could again be friendly upbraiding, implying that you are asking too much of yourself]
Answer: The correct structure of this sentence must be:
Subject + should + not + verb
[For this case] Subject + should + not + have + past participle
Therefore, the correct sentence is You should not have believed him.
Reference: https://blog.abaenglish.com/negative-sentences-with-must-and-should/


Add a predefined page to site

Question: I have a folder containing an index page, assets, JS etc. that I want to add as it's own page to my wordpress site without just linking to where it's hosted on a webserver. I have copied this folder into my wp-content directory but am not sure how to now add it to the site itself, can anyone help me with this or suggest an alternate way of achieving the same?
Comment: If you want to use all the functionalites of WordPress, you have to follow the WordPress philosophy. The first thing that you can try is going in the backend (`/wp-admin/`) and create a new page.
Comment: Yes I can do that, but what I want to do is add a page via the wp-admin dashboard, but have that page just be the one I already have in my content folder, is that possible?
Comment: Not exactly. In order to include things like your header with navigation, your sitewide footer, and your sitewide styles, you need to: add the content as a page, set up a child theme, and then create a page template if you want the content to display differently or if you have added functionality like your JS/assets. Just uploading a straight page means your content is completely separate and cut off from WordPress, and you can't add links to it from menus, etc. It also means if your site navigation/footer/etc. change those changes won't copy over to your static page.
Answer: The best option for you likely is to create a page template.  This will allow you to put your code in a php file (the template) and add footer and header information to that page.  You then assign this file to a page within wordpress.  That ties your new code into wordpress.  You still have access to the page in your actual server directories (wp-admin/wp-content/themes/child-theme/template-rtcustom.php for example).
You'll be able to tie in all your assets as normal if you're used to coding.  It's definitely not as simple as drop and go, but it is a relatively simple process depending on your theme.
This is not a guide I wrote, but it will give you more of an idea of what you're getting into:
https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/creating-custom-page-templates-in-wordpress/

Add a predefined page to site


What does it mean when after Mrs is used the first name?

Question: In one of social network the name of my teacher was written using Mrs + first name. She is 30 year old. I know that Mrs was most often used by a woman when married, in conjunction with her husband's first and last names. So does it mean that she is divorced, or ... ?
Comment: 'Mrs Anne' might just be a regionally acceptable / non-standard way of combining respect and friendliness in a title. It might also be used to disambiguate when there are two Mesdames Smith, for example.
Comment: Have you asked her?
Comment: No I have no chance.
Comment: Mrs. [first_name] could just mean that her last name is impossible to pronounce.
Comment: Possible duplicate of [Can "Mr", "Mrs", etc. be used with a first name?](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/53945/can-mr-mrs-etc-be-used-with-a-first-name)
Answer: Mrs. [husbands_first_name] [husbands_lastname] would be a formal but not quite obsolete usage; could also be considered sexist nowadays. You might see this in places like newspaper wedding announcements or obituaries, or Jane Austen novels.
Mrs. [her_first_name] would probably mean that the person in question is currently married, and would be quite informal and a bit odd outside of an elementary school teacher as Tim says, or a childrens entertainer. :-)
Miss or Ms. [her_first_name] is slightly uncommon and possibly regional, again per Tim's comment, but most native speakers would not find this too odd, and would interpret it as meaning that the subject has never married, for "Miss", or is either older or divorced in the case of "Ms.". A good example would be "Miss Ellie" of the 80s soap opera "Dallas". I think that the Beverly Hillbillies also called Mr. Drysdale's assistant "Miss Jane", while he referred to her as "Miss Hathaway", which supports the idea of this being a regional usage.
[Mrs/Miss/Ms] [her_lastname] would be most common and appropriate; [Mrs/Miss/Ms] [her_firstname] [her lastname] would also be fine, and is what would probably be used in legal documents, for instance.
Answer: As the other answers say, any use of the title "Mrs." suggests
that the woman is married or widowed (or possibly divorced).
If she is using "Mrs." + (her first name) as her "screen name" (user name)
on a social media site,
that could simply mean that she is doing it for anonymity purposes.
Specifically, if people find her profile (i.e., her photograph, etc.)
on the social media site,
she might want them not to be able to learn her last name from the site
(because that would make it much easier for them
to find out other information about her, such as her home address).
Answer: Nowadays, a Mrs Jones  could be the wife of Mr Jones, or his widow, or a woman who chooses to continue using the Jones surname, which she chose to take on as her own at marriage, even after their divorce, because it may be the name she is known by where her children go to school, or for some other personal reason.
Comment: Mrs + first name is unusual except in certain contexts. An elementary school teacher might have her students call her Mrs {first name}.
Comment: Ah, that makes a difference :)  We would need more context.  In the American South, it is common to be called Mr or Miss plus one's given name.  I have not heard it with Mrs, however.
Comment: No, it is not the normal way to write the name of an unmarried or divorced woman.  There is no such thing as a normal way to do this.  In western nations where English is spoken, a woman's title + name is often not a reliable guide to her married status.
Comment: Sorry by mistake I have wrote Mrs + second name, now I have corrected so she is used is Mrs + first name
Comment: So, what can it mean?
Comment: Can it be the normal way to write the name of an unmarried or divorced woman ?
Comment: Sorry but Mrs + first name is also not so ordinary, is it ?


Why do all soft close hinges require 1/2 inch or 12mm holes on the cabinet door?

Question: I have a 1/4 inch cabinet door and I would like to install a soft close hinge, but they all require a massive hole for the machinery to go inside the door itself. You would have to have super thick door (at least 3/4" thick) to support such a hole. Is there a technical reason why soft close is not made for lighter doors? It seems like it would weaken the door to have huge holes in it and I would like to know why the machinery is not on the cabinet shelf (hidden) instead of the door.
Comment: I suspect you answered your own question here, the hole is the size that's needed for the 'machinery'.
Comment: BTW 3/4" doors aren't super thick, they may not be standard but they're common enough that they're not unusual. 1/4" on the other hand **is** super thin. It's unlikely a door (in wood) that's only that thickness could be stable in service unless it's quite small, and even at that I wouldn't be surprised if there's some warping over time and with use.
Comment: Out of curiosity, no one does it, but one can actually install the hinge the other way round, isn't it?
Comment: Cabinet hinges are made for 3/4" stock because that's the standard thickness for cabinet door rails and stiles or solid-panel cabinet doors.  You have to remember for every heirloom-grade custom made Krenov-style cabinet (or whatever you're making) there are probably 1000 kitchen cabinets made out of 3/4 sheet stock.
Comment: Wow, the people here in Woodworking are much nicer than in some other forums. I still do not understand why the machinery is so big, or why a lightweight version cannot be made for light doors, or why the machinery cannot be put on the inside and not on the door. I am considering to flip it around, but it is "recessed" 1/4" and might not work reversed but I will try.
Comment: Let us know how your experiment turns out.
Answer: You have not mentioned a particular hinge, but many soft-close hinges are "euro"-style cup hinges, and I assume that's what you're asking about.
Euro-style hinges were designed in, well, Europe, in the aftermath of World War II, when a great many houses and therefore kitchens had to be rebuilt, particularly after the fire-storms in Germany. The problem outstripped the capacity of individual, built-in-place-by-a-carpenter cabinets and the solution was to manufacture cabinets in factories. You can find more on the history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/32_mm_cabinetmaking_system
The Euro-style cabinets (the kind you find at IKEA and many big-box stores), also known as "frameless" cabinets, were designed by engineers for large-scale manufacturing and compact (flat-pack) transportation. They were also designed to use inexpensive materials throughout, in particular to not require solid wood (baseline euro cabinets are built entirely from particleboard). The so-called "32mm system" of vertical rows of holes is part of that system.
The hinges were designed with a "cup" that locates the door-side of the hinge precisely and provides much more support than screws alone by fitting snugly into an easy-to-machine-at-scale 35mm flat-bottomed recess cut into the door. Any hinge that meets this interface can be used without on-site drilling of custom holes, regardless of the hinge manufacturer. It also compensates for the use of weaker materials, in particular particleboard instead of solid-wood otherwise used in the door frame.
The depth of the cup varies, although I'm sure there's a minimum and maximum in an ISO spec somewhere.
The reason why this depth is more than 1/4" is just as Graphus and SaSSafraS1232 mention in their comments. The standard door thickness is 3/4" for stability reasons. It's a heavily stressed part of the cabinet and is supported only by the hinges, compared to the cabinet box elements which are supported full-length by each other and usually a wall and/or floor.
Comment: @Xuan You might consider a separate soft-close accessory like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Rok-Hardware-Cabinet-Compact-Adapter/dp/B00J9XB6BQ/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1532277250&sr=8-6&keywords=soft-close+hinge&dpID=41HpsKZ9uHL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch. It mounts separately from the hinge and provides a similar function.
Comment: I had not consider that the large hole could offer more support if it were to be tightly snug. I thought the large hole would weaken the door but if it were a very snug fit that could make sense. You also explain why they are all the same size because they are based on a standard in Europe. Let us hope that US will break this standard soon and make tiny soft close hinges for smaller doors and boxes.


Upper bound on an integral

Question: Let $ f : [0,1] \to \mathbb{R} $ be a function satisfying: 1.) $ |f(x)| \leqslant a $ for some $ a < 1 $, and 2.) $ \int_0^1 f(x) dx = 0 $. I would like to know whether the following inequality holds:
$$
\int_0^1 \frac{1}{1+f(x)} dx \stackrel{?}{\leqslant} \frac{1}{1-a^2} .
$$
I've confirmed it numerically in some special cases, e.g., $ f(x) = a \cos(2\pi n x) $ for various $ a, n $. It is also easy to see that it holds (with equality) when $ f(x) = \pm a $, each on one half of the domain.
Comment: There is a problem since $a^2 < a$
Comment: did you add the property $\int f = 0$?
Answer: Since $|f(x)| \leq a$, then one has $$f(x)^2 \leq a^2, \quad \quad \text{so }\quad\quad 1-f(x)^2 \geq 1-a^2$$
Dividing by $(1+f(x))(1+a)$, one gets
$$\dfrac{1-f(x)}{1+a} \geq \dfrac{1-a}{1+f(x)}$$
Now integrate between $0$ and $1$ : using the assumption $\displaystyle \int_0^1 f(x) dx = 0$, you get
$$(1-a)\int_0^1 \dfrac{dx}{1+f(x)} \leq \dfrac{1}{1+a}\int_0^1 (1-f(x)) dx =  \dfrac{1}{1+a}$$
so finally $$\boxed{\int_0^1 \dfrac{dx}{1+f(x)} \leq \dfrac{1}{1-a^2}}$$
Comment: Very nice! A minor remark: If you divide by $(1+f)(1-a^2)$ then you get $\frac{1}{1+f} \le \frac{1-f}{1-a^2}$ and the result follows even faster.
Comment: Smart trick! well done
Comment: @MartinR Yes, indeed, thanks ! Sometimes I like to complicate my thinking...
Comment: @MartinR is $1+f$ shorthand for $1+f(x)$? This is the first time I'm experiencing notation like this.
Comment: @stickynotememo: If you interpret $1$ as the constant function $x \mapsto 1$ then $1+f$ is the function $x \mapsto 1 + f(x)$. But here I was just sloppy to save time and space.

Upper bound on an integral


Time series with seasonality

Question: I am working on time series with seasonality. However, the event that is repeated every year doesn't happen exactly in the same time, it advances by specific period of time. (example an event happened this year on 1st January, next year will take place on 11th January and the year after that 21st January and so on. each time it adds 10days). is there a way to work with such pattern? does it have a great impact on our work?
Answer:
is there a way to work with such pattern?

Use a causal model with a Boolean predictor, possibly lagged, or using some profile if the impact of the event changes over time. For instance, the event could have a strong impact when it happens and then a weaker and weaker effect over the next ten days. For something like this, some kind of "ramp-like" predictor would make sense.
A reasonable causal model might be regression with seasonal dummies to capture the seasonality. Consider interaction terms between the seasonal and the event dummies, if your seasonality has a short period, like day-of-week or day-of-month. If by "seasonality" you mean yearly seasonality, an interaction will likely not be necessary. Alternatively, try regression with ARIMA errors.

does it have a great impact on our work?

We can't tell you that, it will depend on your data. The specific date of Easter, which also shifts around in the year, will have a huge impact on the demand for eggs, but presumably much less so for many other products demanded, e.g., mousetraps.

Time series with seasonality


Short run of propane to stove and tankless WH

Question: I have a small stove with a propane conversion kit and a 3gpm propane tankless water heater. This is for a small MIL suite ~650 sqft. Both the stove and the water heater are on the same exterior wall, about 6ft apart.  The wall has no windows or other openings. I want to place 2 20lb BBQ tanks outside on that wall. I've been searching for information about connecting a changeover valve like used in RVs to them.  From there, a short run of black pipe, through the wall to street elbows and a shut-off valve at each appliance. Both appliances have 1/2" connections.  I can't seem to find specific information about connecting the tanks to the black pipe. What do I use?  I am going to have this pressure tested and inspected after I'm done.
Comment: 40lbs of propane isn't a whole lot of propane, especially for a tankless heater!
Comment: I did the calculation on the tankless alone. 430k BTU tank and 75k BTU tankless (430000/75000/.25). A single tank should last about 23 days given a 15 minute shower once a day. I do not expect this to be used heavily. Some reviewers said they get between 45 and 60 days on a 20lb tank. The 75k BTU/hr is the max 45 degree rise at 3.4 GPM. A shower uses 2.5 GPM and we have between 62-72 degree water year round.
Comment: Ah -- good that you ran the numbers -- the duty cycle of your operation is what makes this different from the previous cases I've seen on this Stack.
Comment: After more than a year of running on BBQ tanks, I can say that this has worked out well.  The propane powers both a stove and the tankless.  Washing dishes, cooking, and showering is about a month per tank.
Answer: What I ended up getting was a hose with a regulator.  On the other end was a 3/8" flare female.  I found a 3/8" flare male to 1/2" MIP (Male iron pipe).  I used a 1/2" coupling to a 3" nipple to a tee.  From there it went to each of the 1/2" nipples through the wall, to a street elbow, and finally to a gas shutoff valve.  This is the basic setup now.  I'll have to order a changeover for the 2nd tank.
<code>street elbow => shutoff         street elbow => shutoff
|              ---------        |
|                wall           |
|              ---------        |
|__________________Tee__________|
                    |
                    |
              1/2" coupling
                    |
        3/8" male flare to 1/2" MIP
Regulator with hose 5/8" female to 3/8" female
              propane tank
</code>


What is the process for restoring iPhone from a backup that is NOT in iTunes?

Question: I would like to restore my iPhone from a backup that is not listed in iTunes. How can I do that? The backup file is saved on my computer hard drive. Thx.
Comment: Look at [this answer](http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/77793/88313).  It tells you how to restore using iTunes and navigating to the backup on your hard drive.
Answer: Is the backup folder in the right location on the hard drive? iTunes only lists backups in the MobileSync/Backup folder. If you need to move the folder there, here's instructions for Mac and Windows for getting to that folder: https://deciphertools.com/blog/where-are-iphone-backups/
If it's in the right place, let's make sure it's not a version issue. iTunes won't show backups as a restore choice if they are incompatible with the version of iOS you're restoring to.

Open the iTunes Preferences (iTunes menu on Mac, and Edit menu on Windows)
Change to the "Devices" tab.

If you see the backup listed in Devices, iTunes recognizes the backup, and the issue is that the device you're restoring to is running a lower version of iOS than the device that made the backup.
Comment: @Sizzle If you were able to resolve your problem, please post that as an answer and accept it.  That will help others in the future who might have a similar problem.  See [answer].
Comment: Thx for the response. It was not a version issue. It was a matter of finding the backup on my drive...the long story is that I backed up the phone on new MacBook Pro...and reset to factory settings. Backup was encrypted...and I had no idea what password was!!! I moved the backup to my iMac where the password was in my keychain...but then I finally figured out the password after many attempts, so I was able to restore from the MacBook. Thx for your answer!
Comment: Thx for your help with this...in all seriousness, should I post "I finally remembered my password" as my answer? I don't think that will be much help to someone else. Please advise. Thx.


Why does Frank Castle place a red pump beside a car?

Question: In The Punisher (2004), Frank Castle places this red pump beside a car, and does it twice in the movie:

Why he is doing this?
Answer: That is a fake fire hydrant. It is not allowed to park your car next to a fire hydrant, because in case of a fire the fire brigade cannot have a clear access to the hydrant. If you park your car next to one, you will get a ticket, you will be fined, and that is what happens with Howard Saint's wife. It seems she parked next to a hydrant a she gets a ticket. Later, Howard Saints finds this ticket and this way he knows that his wife was at the hotel at the same time when his trusted associate was also there. This all is part of Castle's plan to manipulate Saint into thinking that his wife and his associate have an affair.
Answer: He is using a fake fire hydrant to make people think they can't park in that space. Blocking a hydrant is a big fine and possible towing. When he wants to park, he puts the hydrant away. When he wants someone to get a fine, he puts the hydrant there.
Here, he's doing it to get her ticketed, to further his plan.
Comment: -1 because while what you say MAY happen - it simply is not what happens in this scene. The car is already parked there. The first answer is correct - he does it to trigger the car getting a parking ticket. Which is part of a scheme to proove the car was there at that time.
Answer: It's all part of the punishment... He places the fire hydrant at the location he steals Mrs. Saint's car from to simply save that exact parking spot... Once Frank steals the car (while Mrs. Saint is watching movies or whatever) he goes and illegally parks it at the country club in effort to accumulate a bunch of parking tickets which are time and date stamped (without her knowing it).  Frank then returns Mrs. Saint's car, collects the fire hydrant which saved the exact parking spot, and prevents any suspicion from Mrs. Saint.  One can only assume Frank does this for weeks on end due to the huge glob of tickets Mr. Saint throws in his consigliere's face upon of accusing him of cheating with his wife... Combine this with Frank's phony blackmail photo scam (which baited the gay consigliere to the country club at the same time the tickets were handed out), the consigliere was forced to lie to Mr. Saint twice about his wearabouts creating the very suspicion which was comfirmed by the parking tickets (time, date, and location thereof) and the earring on his bed...  Frank manufactured certainty in Howard Saint's mind that his beloved wife was cheating on him with his gay consigliere and reveals it at the end before killing him. All part of the punishment...


Will a room heat quicker with a fan blowing on a hot surface? Why?

Question: I got into an argument with someone who thinks that blowing air across a fireplace will make the room heat more slowly, but based upon the principles computer heat sinks use to get heat away the room would get warmer quicker because you're getting the heat away from the area faster. Which way is true for heating up the room with the fireplace in it along with the rest of the house?
Comment: Blowing air across a fireplace will blow smoke into the room, unless all the blown air goes directly up the chimney.  In that case, the blown air may make a difference due to radiant heat transfer, but not due to convective heat transfer.
Comment: @DavidWhite: Hmm, who said anything about smoke? ;-) Assuming the fireplace is e.g. electrical, blowing air on it will improve convection and the room will heat up slightly faster. I'm also assuming the power output of the fireplace is constant.
Comment: @Gert, I agree with your point.  The OP should be somewhat more specific on the physical situation that he is arguing about.
Comment: You need to be careful about what you mean by "heat the room". The *walls* are mostly heated by *radiation* from the fire, which is not affected by the air. But what you "feel" as warm or cold is the *air* temperature, and to make the room "feel warm" you need to mix the air to get the same temperature everywhere.
Answer: It all depends on the fireplace. If the fireplace is in the center of the room, and you blow on the back side of it, you will increase convection currents , and yes, heat will be distributed faster. If you blow across the front of the fireplace, or you have a fireplace in the wall, you will be increasing the rate by which the air goes up the chimney, and thus most probably it will take more time to heat the room because half of the warm air  circulates in the room and half goes up the chimney, in excess of the usual loss of heat in fireplaces. Fireplaces are very inefficient in heating, most of the heat goes to the wall and up the chimney.
There are special fans  that can be installed in a fireplace that blow air towards the room, not allowing so much of the heat to go up the chimney and to the walls. So the answer depends on the geometry of how the fan is used.


how to scroll the window when InputBox dialog is displayed in VBA?

Question: I want the user to input the last filled cell number through an InputBox dialog.
numRows = InputBox("Enter number of rows in the BOM: ", "Number of Rows")

The problem is when the dialog is on the screen the user cannot scroll down to see the last row. It will be hard to find the number of filled rows dynamically since some cells are filled some are not.
Thank you.
EDIT:
i am using Excel 2007
Answer: I suggest you should find out the last filled row programmatically without asking the user. Here
http://www.mrexcel.com/td0058.html
are some different solutions for this problem (dealing also with the case where some cells are filled and some are not).
Comment: in case anyone is curious here is what i did:  numRows = Range("A:B").SpecialCells(xlLastCell).Select, it scrolls down to the last filled cell and then i ask the user for the number.
Answer: While this has been closed out I will add these comments as an answer rather than as a comment given the length of this response and the need for formatting. The link does correctly note that the SpecialCells approach that you have selected can be problematic, I have added a fix below. Plus I have added code that will look at the actual number of rows in xl2007, the link (written back in 2002) currently fixes at 65536 rows as this was the only row number in existence for Excel at this time

SpecialCells

LastRow = Cells.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).Row

can be applied like this to ensure the usedrange is reset properly to the last cell
 ActiveSheet.UsedRange
 LastRow = Cells.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeLastCell).Row

Using row count from bottom
LastRowColA = Range("A65536").End(xlUp).Row

to cater for rows in all excel versions (xl07 and xl10 have 1.048 Million Rows)
    LastRowColA = Cells(Rows.Count,"A").End(xlUp).Row

Using Find
LastRow = Cells.Find("*",SearchOrder:=xlByRows,SearchDirection:=xlPrevious).Row

this will error out if the sheet is blank (ie has no values to dfind)
    Dim rng1 As Range
    Set rng1 = Cells.Find("*", SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlPrevious)
    If Not rng1 Is Nothing Then
        LastRow = rng1.Row
    Else
        'sheet is blank
    End I


How to find in which overlay is desired package?

Question: How do I identify which overlays (if any) contain a particular package?
Answer: I was just looking for the very same thing. If you use eix, you are in luck.
From the wiki:
Adding overlays to the cache
To search not only in the portage tree but all the overlays, add overlays to the cache
root # eix-remote update

and then sync it all:
root # eix-sync

(example from my system)
 $ eix nuvola
* x11-themes/nuvola
  Available versions:  1.0-r1^bs
  Homepage:            http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=5358
  Description:         Nuvola SVG icon theme

Hmm that doesn't look like a google music player ... time to add some more sources:
 $ eix-remote update
<snip>
Saving to: 'eix-cache.tbz2'
* Unpacking data
layman/Armageddon -> Armageddon
layman/AstroFloyd -> AstroFloyd
 layman/AzP -> AzP
<snip>

looks like about 500 sources :)
root # eix-sync -q

Now when searching, if you wish to expand your search, add -R (remote) to search all overlays, installed or not. You will want to sync it with eix-remote from time to time. See man eix.
 $ eix -R nuvola
* media-sound/nuvolaplayer
 Available versions:  (~)2.0.1[2] (~)2.0.3[1] {debug}
 Homepage:            https://launchpad.net/nuvola-player
 Description:         Cloud music integration for your Linux desktop

* x11-themes/nuvola
 Available versions:  1.0-r1^bs
 Homepage:            http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=5358
 Description:         Nuvola SVG icon theme

[1] "sabayon" layman/sabayon
[2] "tante" layman/tante

Answer: I don't think there is an automated system to search through overlayes by specific package name. what you can do is:

run layman -L to see the available overlays and guess based on their names if they have the package you are looking for.
search here: http://gpo.zugaina.org/
google for 'gentoo package_name'
Comment: Looks like you are right. I tried Paludis with `cave show ` which can show package's repository, but it searches only in overlays already added to `layman` AFAIK.
 I'll wait 2 days to accept your answer. Thanks.
Answer: Not before, but during emerging you will see:
Answer: Emerge will tell you the name of the repository if you pass -v
Comment: Looks like no :(

```# emerge --search --verbose aws-vault

[ Results for search key : aws-vault ]
Searching...

*  app-admin/aws-vault
      Latest version available: 6.6.0
      Latest version installed: 6.6.0
      Size of files: 15012 KiB
      Homepage:      https://github.com/99designs/aws-vault
      Description:   Securely store and access AWS credentials in development environments
      License:       Apache-2.0 BSD BSD-2 MIT

[ Applications found : 1 ]
```


Installing ESXi/ Hyper-V using NIC supporting iBFT

Question: We can install ESXi to a iSCSI target if we have NIC that supports iBFT. But what I am trying to see is if we can install ESXi by booting off an iSCSI target which is a mounted ISO? How about Hyper-V ? If my understanding is correct, this requires installers to support Software iSCSI? Does ESXi/Hyper-V installer support Software iSCSI?
Answer: Hyper-V boots in any way that Windows boots, including through iBFT.


Do I gain any benefit from holding a weapon with multiple limbs?

Question: I am aware that holding a weapon with 2 hands allows you to use 1.5 of strength modifier for its damage dealt. If one would wield a weapon with more than 2 arms, like 4 or 6 would it provide some bonuses?
Answer: Pathfinder, so far as I'm aware, makes no mention of wielding a weapon with more than two hands. (Presumably, a 3-handed creature, for example, could wield a weapon with all three of its hands if it wanted to, but it wouldn't receive any particular advantage for doing so.)
However, in Pathfinder's antecedent Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rules for three-or-more-handed wielding are available in Savage Species in a section with the on-the-nose title Three or More Hands:

[W]hen you deal damage with a weapon that you are wielding two-handed, you add 1 1/2 times your Strength bonus. The wielder of a light weapon does not get this higher Strength bonus when using the weapon two-handed…. Provided that a weapon is designed for more than two hands, each additional hand used increases the damage dealt with that weapon. Each hand used beyond the first adds 1/2 the wielder's Strength bonus to the damage. A creature wielding a Medium-size  longsword with two hands adds 1 1/2 times its Strength bonus to the damage roll. A girallon wielding a Huge club with all four hands adds 2 1/2 times its Strength bonus to the damage roll.
Any weapon… can be lengthened, balanced, and otherwise designed and crafted for creatures with more than two hands. The determining factor is  the relationship between the size of the wielder and the size of the user. Light weapons can never be designed for use with more than two hands. One-handed weapons can already be used with two hands, and can be designed for use with four hands. Two-handed weapons can be designed for use with up to eight hands. The cost is for a masterwork version of the weapon, and the wielder gains the benefits of using a masterwork weapon as well. (42 and emphasis mine)

Thus, for example, a marilith could wield in its six hands a specially-designed greatsword and deal with it an extra 3½× the marilith's Strength bonus in addition to the weapon's normal damage. (Note that because of its extraordinary ability multiweapon mastery, this is usually a suboptimal choice for a marilith!)
With the GM's approval, this rule can ported largely as-is into Pathfinder, which is backwards-compatible with D&D 3.5. In the interest of full disclosure, I've used this rule in my D&D 3.5 campaigns and haven't found it to be unbalanced there, but I've not seen it used in a Pathfinder campaign, and, although I can't think of anything off hand, it's always possible that somewhere in the tens of thousands of pages of Pathfinder material that there's something that exploits ruthlessly this rule.
Comment: This is great. I think it would be more likely for a marilith to use 2 3-handed weapons than a single 6 handed weapon. Would be interesting to figure out the sweet spot in terms of DPR.
Answer: Short answer:  No.
There may be a third party supplement out there that has a racial ability or feat to do so but none that I am aware of.
The rules as stated make sense.
The benefit that a humanoid gets from using two hands is that they are using their whole body to power the weapon.
So, if it takes more arms to transfer the whole body's power into the swing, it is still just the 1.5x increase from putting the whole body behind the swing.
I the argument is that something big enough to have that many arms would have more power, that is already counted in the increased STR from their size.


Is there any GUI Ethereum Wallet that let's you manually set gas price?

Question: Is there any GUI wallet that lets you manually set the gas price? I've tried MyEtherWallet and Mist but both only have a sliding fee bar with an upper limit to the fee. Is my only alternative a command line wallet like Geth?
Answer: The Parity UI lets you set the gas price. When the "Signer" pops up the transaction confirmation dialog, there is blue text that reads "EDIT CONDITIONS/GAS/GASPRICE". Click this blue text and a new dialog lets you change the gas limit and gas price. The default is 20 Gwei (2 followed by 10 zeros). These days 2 Gwei is enough but slow. See EthGasStation.info.

While the MetaMask chrome extension isn't a wallet per se, it does allow you to set the gas price. This is useful if you want to control the gass price that a Dapp uses for its operations. The transaction confirmation dialog includes a field you can edit.
Answer: MyEtherWallet now allows you to set your own Gas price.
It currently allows prices as low as 1 Gwei and as high as 50 Gwei.
Answer: As of today, neither MyEtherWallet nor MetaMask truly allow you to set the gas price. On neither wallet will you be able to actually send the maximum amount of Ethereum in your wallet, due to their built-in calculations.
The slider mentioned above for MEW doesn't exist any longer, and MetaMask doesn't allow you to click "next" when its built-in calculations think you won't have any Ethereum left.


Empty real conic containing two pairs of conjugate points in the projective plane?

Question: Given two conjugate pairs of points in general position in $\mathbb{CP}^2$, there is a pencil of real conics containing these four points. Is there a real empty conic in this pencil?
Comment: What is perhaps more interesting (although a bit obvious in this case) is that the real manifold parameterizing smooth, real "empty" conics containing the four points is itself connected.  I believe the analogue can fail, for instance, for empty quartic elliptic curves in $\mathbb{R}P^3$.
Answer: Yes, there is a real empty conic containing the points.  Denote the first conjugate set of points by $\{p,\overline{p}\}$, and denote the second conjugate set of points by $\{q,\overline{q}\}$.  If the pairs are "general", then no three of these four points are collinear.  In particular, the lines $L=\text{span}(p,q)$ and $\overline{L}=\text{span}(\overline{p},\overline{q})$ are distinct and intersect in a unique real point $r$.  The union $L\cup \overline{L}$ is invariant under conjugation, hence it has a (homogeneous, degree 2) defining polynomial $F$ that with real coefficients.  Choose a real chart $B$ about $r$ (or rather about a preimage point in $\mathbb{R}^3\setminus\{0\}$, or alternatively, dehomogenize $F$ on $B$).  Since the only zero of $F$ on $B$ is at $r$, either $F$ is nonnegative with unique zero at $r$, or $F$ is nonpositive with unique zero at $r$.  Up to replacing $F$ by $-F$, assume that $F$ is nonnegative.
Now consider the lines $P=\text{span}(p,\overline{p})$ and $Q=\text{span}(q,\overline{q})$.  If $r$ were contained in $P$, then $P$ would equal $L$ so that $q$ is contained in $P$, i.e., $p$, $\overline{p}$ and $q$ are collinear, contrary to the hypothesis that the pairs are "general".  Thus $r$ is not contained in $P$.  By the same argument, also $r$ is not contained in $Q$.  Thus $r$ is not contained in $P\cup Q$.  Since $P\cup Q$ is invariant under conjugation, there is a defining equation $G$ with real coefficients.  Since $r$ is not contained in $G$, either $G$ is positive or negative on $r$.  Up to replacing by $-G$, assume that $G$ is positive.  Up to shrinking $B$, we may assume that $G$ is positive on all of $B$.
Since $F$ has only one zero in $\mathbb{R}P^2$ at $r$, and since $G$ is positive on a neighborhood $B$ of $r$, for sufficiently small $\epsilon>0$, $F+\epsilon G$ has no zeroes in $\mathbb{R}P^2$ (I am using that $\mathbb{R}P^2$ is compact).


How to generate distributions given, mean, SD, skew and kurtosis in R?

Question: Is it possible to generate distributions in R for which the Mean, SD, skew and kurtosis are known? So far it appears the best route would be to create random numbers and transform them accordingly.
If there is a package tailored to generating specific distributions which could be adapted, I have not yet found it.
Thanks
Comment: As noted those don't uniquely describe a distribution.  Even if you define all of the moments you're not guaranteed to uniquely define a distribution.  I think you need to explain what it is you're exactly trying to do.  Why are you trying to do this?  Can you place further restrictions that would make it possible to define a distribution?
Comment: On Cross Validated (stats.SE) the following is somewhat related & may be of interest to readers here: [How to simulate data that satisfy specific constraints such as having specific mean and standard deviation?](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/30303/7290)
Comment: Ah yes, we want unimodal, continuous distributions in a single dimension. The resultant distributions will eventually be transformed numerically as a way to test a variation of niche theory through simulation.
Answer: There is a Johnson distribution in the SuppDists package. Johnson will give you a distribution that matches either moments or quantiles. Others comments are correct that 4 moments does not a distribution make. But Johnson will certainly try.
Here's an example of fitting a Johnson to some sample data:
require(SuppDists)

## make a weird dist with Kurtosis and Skew
a <- rnorm( 5000, 0, 2 )
b <- rnorm( 1000, -2, 4 )
c <- rnorm( 3000,  4, 4 )
babyGotKurtosis <- c( a, b, c )
hist( babyGotKurtosis , freq=FALSE)

## Fit a Johnson distribution to the data
## TODO: Insert Johnson joke here
parms<-JohnsonFit(babyGotKurtosis, moment="find")

## Print out the parameters
sJohnson(parms)

## add the Johnson function to the histogram
plot(function(x)dJohnson(x,parms), -20, 20, add=TRUE, col="red")

The final plot looks like this:

You can see a bit of the issue that others point out about how 4 moments do not fully capture a distribution.
Good luck!
EDIT
As Hadley pointed out in the comments, the Johnson fit looks off. I did a quick test and fit the Johnson distribution using moment="quant" which fits the Johnson distribution using 5 quantiles instead of the 4 moments. The results look much better:
parms<-JohnsonFit(babyGotKurtosis, moment="quant")
plot(function(x)dJohnson(x,parms), -20, 20, add=TRUE, col="red")

Which produces the following:

Anyone have any ideas why Johnson seems biased when fit using moments?
Comment: Something looks wrong with that curve - a simple position shift would make the fit substantially better
Comment: I agree it looks off. When I get a little time I may dig into it a tad.
Comment: NOTE: This code no longer works on R=4.0
Answer: This is an interesting question, which doesn't really have a good solution. I presume that even though you don't know the other moments, you have an idea of what the distribution should look like. For example, it's unimodal.
There a few different ways of tackling this problem:

Assume an underlying distribution and match moments. There are many standard R packages for doing this. One downside is that the multivariate generalisation may be unclear.
Saddlepoint approximations. In this paper:
Gillespie, C.S. and Renshaw, E. An improved saddlepoint approximation. Mathematical Biosciences, 2007.
We look at recovering a pdf/pmf when given only the first few moments. We found that this approach works when the skewness isn't too large.
Laguerre expansions:
Mustapha, H. and Dimitrakopoulosa, R. Generalized Laguerre expansions of multivariate probability densities with moments. Computers & Mathematics with Applications, 2010.
The results in this paper seem more promising, but I haven't coded them up.
Answer: This question was asked more than 3 years ago, so I hope my answer doesn't come too late.
There is a way to uniquely identify a distribution when knowing some of the moments. That way is the method of Maximum Entropy. The distribution that results from this method is the distribution that maximizes your ignorance about the structure of the distribution, given what you know. Any other distribution that also has the moments that you specified but is not the MaxEnt distribution is implicitly assuming more structure than what you input. The functional to maximize is Shannon's Information Entropy, $S[p(x)] = - \int p(x)log p(x) dx$. Knowing the mean, sd, skewness and kurtosis, translate as constraints on the first, second, third, and fourth moments of the distribution, respectively.
The problem is then to maximize S subject to the constraints:
1) $\int x p(x) dx = "first moment"$,
2) $\int x^2 p(x) dx = "second moment"$,
3) ... and so on
I recommend the book "Harte, J., Maximum Entropy and Ecology: A Theory of Abundance, Distribution, and Energetics (Oxford University Press, New York, 2011)."
Here is a link that tries to implement this in R:
https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/21173/max-entropy-solver-in-r
Answer: One solution for you might be the PearsonDS library. It allows you to use a combination of the first four moments with the restriction that kurtosis > skewness^2 + 1.
To generate 10 random values from that distribution try:
library("PearsonDS")
moments <- c(mean = 0,variance = 1,skewness = 1.5, kurtosis = 4)
rpearson(10, moments = moments)

Comment: Is there any equivalent to this in Python?
Answer: I agree you need density estimation to replicate any distribution. However, if you have hundreds of variables, as is typical in a Monte Carlo simulation, you would need to have a compromise.
One suggested approach is as follows:

Use the Fleishman transform to get the coefficient for  the given skew and kurtosis. Fleishman takes the skew and kurtosis and gives you the coefficients
Generate N normal variables (mean = 0, std = 1)
Transform the data in (2) with the Fleishman coefficients to transform the normal data to the given skew and kurtosis
In this step, use data from from step (3) and transform it to the desired mean and standard deviation (std) using new_data = desired mean + (data from step 3)* desired std

The resulting data from Step 4 will have the desired mean, std, skewness and kurtosis.
Caveats:

Fleishman will not work for all combinations of skewness and kurtois
Above steps assume non-correlated variables. If you want to generate correlated data, you will need a step before the Fleishman transform
Comment: There are R implementation of this?
Answer: Those parameters don't actually fully define a distribution. For that you need a density or equivalently a distribution function.
Answer: The entropy method is a good idea, but if you have the data samples you use more information compared to the use of only the moments! So a moment fit is often less stable. If you have no more information about how the distribution looks like then entropy is a good concept, but if you have more information, e.g. about the support, then use it! If your data is skewed and positive then using a lognormal model is a good idea. If you know also the upper tail is finite, then do not use the lognormal, but maybe the 4-parameter Beta distribution. If nothing is known about support or tail characteristics, then maybe a scaled and shifted lognormal model is fine. If you need more flexibility regarding kurtosis, then e.g. a logT with scaling + shifting is often fine. It can also help if you known that the fit should be near-normal, if this is the case then use a model which includes the normal distribution (often the case anyway), otherwise you may e.g. use a generalized secant-hyperbolic distribution. If you want to do all this, then at some point the model will have some different cases, and you should make sure that there are no gaps or bad transition effects.
Answer: As @David and @Carl wrote above, there are several packages dedicated to generate different distributions, see e.g. the Probability distributions Task View on CRAN.
If you are interested in the theory (how to draw a sample of numbers fitting to a specific distribution with the given parameters) then just look for the appropriate formulas, e.g. see the gamma distribution on Wiki, and make up a simple quality system with the provided parameters to compute scale and shape.
See a concrete example here, where I computed the alpha and beta parameters of a required beta distribution based on mean and standard deviation.


Possible to make MySQL use more than one core?

Question: I've been presented with some dedicated MySQL servers that never use more than a single core. I'm more developer than DBA for MySQL so need some help
Setup
The servers are quite hefty with an OLAP/DataWarehouse (DW) type load:

Primary: 96GB RAM, 8 cores + single RAID 10 array
Test: 32GB RAM with 4 cores
The biggest DB is 540 GB, the total is around 1.1TB and mostly InnoDB tables
Solaris 10 Intel-64
MySQL 5.5.x

Note: The biggest DB is the replicated one from the OLTP DR server and the DW is loaded from this. It isn't a full DW: just last 6 months to 6 weeks so it is smaller than the OLTP DB.
Observations on a test server

3 separate connections
each has a concurrent (and different) ALTER TABLE...DROP KEY...ADD INDEX
the 3 tables have a 2.5, 3.8 and 4.5 million rows
CPU usage goes up to 25% (one core is maxed out) and no higher
the 3 ALTERs take 12-25 minutes (a single on the smallest takes 4.5)

Questions

What setting or patch is required to allow more than one core to be used?
That is, why doesn't MySQL use all cores available? (like other RDBMS)
Is it a consequence of replication?

Other notes

I understand the difference between an RDBMS "thread" and an OS "thread"
I'm not asking about any form of parallelism
Some of the system variables for InnoDB and threads are sub-optimal(looking for a quick win)
Short term, I'm unable to change the disk layout
OS can be tweaked if needed
A single ALTER TABLE on the smallest table takes 4.5 minutes (shocking IMO)

Edit 1

innodb_thread_concurrency is set to 8 on both. Yes, it's wrong but won't make MySQL use multiple cores
innodb_buffer_pool_size is 80GB on primary, 10GB on a test (another instance is shut down). This is OK for now.
innodb_file_per_table = ON

Edit 2

innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 2
innodb_use_sys_malloc = ON
innodb_flush_method should be O_DIRECT (but SHOW VARIABLES doesn't show this)
innodb_doublewrite = OFF
File system = ZFS (And my sysadmin found this: http://blogs.oracle.com/realneel/entry/mysql_innodb_zfs_best_practices)

To test

innodb_flush_method isn't showing as O_DIRECT when it should be
will follow RolandoMySQLDBA's settings

Let me know if I've missed anything important
Cheers
Update
Changed innodb_flush_method + 3 x thread settings in RolandoMySQLDBA's answer
Result: > 1 core used for the tests = positive result
Comment: This question is getting stale -- New versions of `ALTER` can now add/drop indexes much faster.  Further note that the question was asking about throwing more cores at an I/O-bound process -- It won't help.
Answer: I actually discussed innodb_thread_concurrency with a MySQL Expert at the Percona Live NYC conference back in May 2011.
I learned something surprising: In spite of the documentation, it is best to leave innodb_thread_concurrency at 0 (infinite concurrency). That way, InnoDB decides the best number of innodb_concurrency_tickets to open for a given MySQL instance setup.
Once you set innodb_thread_concurrency to 0, you can set innodb_read_io_threads and innodb_write_io_threads (both since MySQL 5.1.38) to the maximum value of 64. This should engage more cores.
Comment: No offense, but can it be with MySQL 8 and 8 years later _almost all_ questions and answers regarding the performance of InnoDB _are not really applicable_ anymore?
Comment: @AlBundy No offense taken, but please keep in mind the shocking number of people and companies still using MySQL 5.5 (which just went EOL Dec 2018). So, answers posted for tuning 5.5 will still be of value as long as 5.5 is actively used.
Comment: Of course, but I meant **explicitly for MySQL 8** the posts don't really apply.
Comment: I can confirm that on Mysql 5.7.30 on Windows 10, I still can effectively use only 1 out of 2 physical CPU's. Even though there are many threads/connections with many queries. I will try the inno_db settings as mentioned here to see if that helps.
Comment: I have MySQL 8 running on Ubuntu. I tried to implement this method but it didn't work. MySQL still using single core.
Answer: MySQL will automatically use multiple cores, so either your load of 25% is coincidence1 or a potential misconfiguration on Solaris. I won't pretend to know how to tune solaris, but here's an article that goes over some solaris-specific tuning information.
The InnoDB tuning pages have been given an overhaul in MySQL 5.5, so there is some good info there as well. From the InnoDB disk IO tips:

If the Unix top tool or the Windows Task Manager shows that the CPU usage percentage with your workload is less than 70%, your workload is probably disk-bound. Maybe you are making too many transaction commits, or the buffer pool is too small. Making the buffer pool bigger can help, but do not set it equal to more than 80% of physical memory.

Some other things to check:

Switching the innodb_flush_method to O_DIRECT is worth testing. If this helps, you might need to mount the filesystem with forcedirectio option
Change the innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit from 1 to 0 (if you don't mind losing the last second on mysql crash) or 2( if you don't mind losing the last second on OS crash).
Check the value of innodb_use_sys_malloc. This article has more information on the variable.

At that time, there were no memory allocator libraries tuned for multi-core CPUs. Therefore, InnoDB implemented its own memory allocator in the mem subsystem. This allocator is guarded by a single mutex, which may become a bottleneck.

But there are some caveats at the end of the section about what it means to turn the variable on (it is on by default in 5.5).

Note that when the InnoDB memory allocator is disabled, InnoDB will ignore the value of the parameter innodb_additional_mem_pool_size.

It is possible that replication is causing some of the problem. I realize you're not interested in parallelism, but from the description of this worklog:

Currently, replication does not scale well on multi-core machines.
  The single slave thread execute replication events one by one and may not
  cope with a load produced by concurrent multiple client connections
  served by separate master server's CPU.

Ultimately, InnoDB might not be the best engine for datawarehousing, because of the disk-based operations that occur. You could consider altering the datawarehouse table(s) to be Compressed MyISAM.
1By coincidence, I mean there is a bottleneck that prevents your load from increasing above 25%, but isn't necessarily a forced single-core issue.
Comment: Now, replication is (optionally) multi-threaded on the Slave.  InnoDB has improved since this Answer was written.  I would not advise using MyISAM, especially not if compressed.
Answer: Note: This Answer is about a single connection using multiple cores. The OP's Question was ambiguous; it incorrectly assumed that MySQL as a whole could not use more than one core. The other Answers correctly point out that the 3-Alter test case is really I/O-bound, hence failing to prove Title question.
A single connection will only use a single core.  (OK, InnoDB uses other threads, hence cores, for some I/O processing, but that is not significant.)
You had 3 ALTERs, so you were not using much more than 3 core's worth.
Alas, not even PARTITION uses multiple cores.
Until recently, multiple connections would max out after 4-8 cores.  Percona's Xtradb (included in MariaDB) makes better use of multiple cores, but still only one per thread.  They max out at about 32 cores.
(Update in 2015:) Multiple connections with 5.6 maxes out at about 48 cores. 5.7 promises to be even better. (So says Oracle benchmarks.) But still no use of multiple cores for a single connection.
Update (after going to Oracle's OpenWorld): the new version 8.x will not have any parallelism.
Further update -- 8.0.17 has cases where it will use multiple cores on a very few selected queries. (That is, don't get excited.)
Answer: IMHO and in the described use-case, you will never use more than one core.  The reason is that your workload is IO bound, not CPU bound.  As your 3 connections are creating a new Index, each of those needs to read the whole table from disk: this is what is taking time, not computing the Indexes.
Answer: Consider that your bottleneck could be your filesystem's IO performance.
In addition to the settings suggested by @RolandoMySQLDBA, I also set the noatime mount settings in /etc/fstab for the partition holding my mysql data directory (/data01/mysql in my case, with /dev/sdb1 mounted to /data01).
By default linux records the access time for EVERY disk read or write which negatively affects IO performance, especially for high IO applications like databases. This means that even reading data from a file triggers a write to disk... WAT!
To disable this, add the noatime mount option in /etc/fstab for the desired mount point as follows (example in my case):
/dev/sdb1  /data01  ext4  defaults,noatime  0  2

Then remount the partition:
mount -o,remount /data01

This should boost the read/write performance of applications using that partition.  BUT... nothing beats holding all your data in memory.


Whats app last seen status not visible

Question: I have a friend on what's app I cannot only see his last seen status, I was able to see it & since a week now I cant see his last seen status. Although I can see when he is online. Message is send me are delivered as I see the double check mark, so don't think he has blocked me, but not sure why I cant view his last status, I can see my other friends status, but not his????
Answer: Whatsapp new update has the setting to hide last seen time stamp like iphone users. In settings-> Account-> Privacy you can hide last seen time stamp. If you choose to hide the last seen time stamp then you will not be able to see the others last seen time stamp.
Comment: I see, but then when you send them messages they are still able to view it correct???
Comment: Yes they can see. It is only to hide last seen time stamp
Answer: No he probably hasn't blocked you. It is the new feature of Whatsapp.There's an option in privacy settings to limit the "last seen" to either no one or only to contacts in your phonebook. When you select either of the two your last seen is visible to only those people. Though the "Online" status is visible when you are online. And massages can be sent and received until blocked.

Whats app last seen status not visible


How does crypto exchange got supply of bitcoins?

Question: Let's take an example of Coinbase or Luno, who are their suppliers of bitcoins to be distributed to the buyers?
Answer: You have to think about it simply, its exchange service lets consider that they're exchanging potatoes for tomato instead of Bitcoin for money.
you've bought 50 kilos of potatoes from a farmer, a customer gave you 2 kilos of tomato for 1 kilo of potatoes and go on, the farmer here is mining pools which is the main source of bitcoins.
So I would say Mining pools and Bitcoin sellers, but there's no specific answer to that question so I've marked it as Primary opinion based.


Remove (known) password from PDF without Acrobat Pro?

Question: We have a number of documents that had been given to us password protected. We have the password for each document, but now we want to remove the protection so that our employees can freely access the PDF's on our fileserver. Is there a way or an open-source tool that can remove the protection? I want to emphasize that I am not looking for a cracker or something, we own the documents and have the passwords, we just want to avoid having to buy Acrobat to remove the protection.
Answer: One easy way would be to use Google Chrome. The trick is to use the print function to make a new pdf document:

Use the built in pdf reader in Chrome to open the document
When prompted, enter the password
Go to the File menu and select Print, instead of sending it to a printer select destination printer as "Save as PDF"
The password should have been removed on the new document

Source: labnol.org
Comment: Sadly, though, it takes 300 times the file space!
Answer: Sejda PDF can help you remove the password restrictions from PDF documents, given you own the documents and have the password.
https://www.sejda.com/unlock-pdf
Free service for documents up to 200 pages or 50 Mb and 3 tasks per hour.
If you prefer to process your files locally instead of online you can use Sejda Desktop: https://www.sejda.com/desktop
I'm one of the developers.
Answer: you can try with https://www.ilovepdf.com/unlock_pdf I use it and works like a charm with no limitations.
as per the site Documentation:
To remove the password from a PDF file, upload the document from your device or straight from your Google Drive or Dropbox account.
Then click the 'Unlock PDF' button. Our tool will unlock your document by removing its password. Check the 'Unlock PDF' limits for each account type.
Of course you said that you own the docs and have the password so I think is a good fit for your needs.
Regards
Comment: Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer).
Comment: While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference.  Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. - [From Review](/review/late-answers/1126985)


How many different strings of 5 lower case letters are there?

Question: How many different strings of 5 lower case letters are there? Assume that letters may repeat and the string must contain at least one letter a?
I tried  this:
5×26^5=5×26 ×26 ×26 ×26=2684880
Answer: $(26)^5 - (25)^5.$
First term is total # of 5 character strings, where each character has 26 choices.
Second term is total # of 5 character strings, where each character has only 25 choices, re no "a" is used.
The difference between the two is the # of 5 character strings with at least 1 "a".
Answer: Break it into five sub-problems:  exactly 1 $A$, exactly 2 $A$s, ..., exactly 5 $A$s.
One $A$:  There are five places for the required $A$, and $25^4$ ways to fill the remaining four slots without the use of another $A$.
Two $A$s:  There are ${5 \choose 2}$ ways to place the two $A$s, and $25^3$ ways to fill the remaining $s$ slots with letters other than $A$.
...
Five $A$s:  There is ${5 \choose 5} = 1$ way to fill with all five $A$s.
Add these up.


Visual Studio Windows Form Size Problem

Question: I'm new to Visual Studio 2010 and I just figured out that the maximum size of the forms that can be created is 1292x812. I need to have many text boxes for the information I needed. However, the size of the form is too small that I can hardly see spaces for other text box. Is there a way to create a form with a scroll bar in it so that even though I have many text boxes it will be access in one form and not to create another form? Please help. Thanks
Answer: I think the max size that you're being allowed is related to the size of your desktop area: My VS2010 just allowed me up to 5132x1092 which would roughly tie with my 3 monitors.
You should size the form so that it looks sensible if you resize your desktop to a common res such as 1024x768, otherwise it'll be too big for the screen for some users.
If you've got that much information you should break it down into logical groups, then use Tabs, or SubForms to show the data.
Putting too much info on one form makes it impossible for the user, and results in monster amounts of code behind the form which is hard to maintain.
Answer: The maximum size of the form is limited by the resolution of the screen on which your developing on.
To answer your question, you work around this issue by dropping a Panel control onto the form and sizing it to whichever size you want. All of your controls are then placed on this panel control rather than the form directly. The panel will automatically add scroll bars as needed.
That said, what you are attempting to do is considered one of the classic "bad ideas" in UI design. When you create a screen like this you're asking the user to process more information than the brain could possibly digest. You question suggests you want to add hundreds of text boxs to a form while the user would feel overwhelmed by 10.
Please take a look at http://www.joelonsoftware.com and read his articles on UI design. They are the best starting point for any new programmer working with UI.
Answer: Add a bigger panel to the form and set a scrollbar.

Visual Studio Windows Form Size Problem


Isn't "behind your back" in front of you?

Question: We've all heard the phrase that usually goes along the lines of "blah blah did something behind my back". I've always thought that from your back's point of view, anything behind you is in front of it therefore behind your back is in front of you. Is this just another unnecessary redundancy and should we all just say "behind me" or am I reading too much into this?
Comment: Something that is behind something else (your back)  that is 'behind' you is behind you.
Comment: If it were to be in front of you, it would have to be behind the _inside_ (or flip side) of your back… and even that could arguably also just as easily be behind you.
Comment: Sometimes a cigar is just a cancer stick.
Answer: I think behind your back is redundant, but not nonsensical.  Something that's behind your back is behind you -- not just behind your toes or your nose, but even further to the rear -- behind your furthest back part.
Comment: It's not syntactically redundant. _Some_ preposition is needed in front of 'your back'.
Answer:
I've always thought that from your
  back's point of view, anything behind
  you is in front of it therefore behind
  your back is in front of you

If that was true then it would be impossible to be behind anything. For example if one said that something is "behind my house", of course it is actually in front of one of the surfaces of my house so it could not be "behind my house".
It's much the same as doing something "in front of my eyes" rather than "in front of me". I think this is called "the power of idiom" or something like that; once a phrase becomes an idiom it doesn't have to make sense any more.
Comment: If your example was "behind the back of my house" then would that be the front of your house? This is my point, we don't say "behind the back" we just say "behind".
Comment: @soutarm: No, "behind the back of my house" would not mean the front of my house. It would be a strangely redundant expression, but the likely meaning would still be something like "behind my house, a little further away than the back of my house".
Answer: The phrase "went behind my back" is to emphasize hidden and sneaky behavior.  You can not say "in front of my back" because that seems like you could face your own back, but you cannot.  Your back in this sense is a noun.  Think backache.
This phrase is more of a saying than literally meaning physically behind you.  It means that you were not consulted, but excluded from a decision.
Answer: I've thought along the same lines as the OP since the early 90s.  I take it as a double reversal, and so the "behind" and "back" negate each other; very similar to a double negative. Other than that, it is probably a chopped combination of meaningful phrases like "behind me" and "when my back is turned." Finally, it is only spoken in angry and retaliatory contexts, or those joking about the same, and so it really shouldn't have a place in my conversations, except in the latter case (where I can additionally point others to its fallacies).
Answer: I agree that it is unnecessary. People are arguing that it's not because reasons. But their reasons are also nonsensical. Everything behind your relative front is behind you. Your back is behind your relative front. Your back is not your relative front so being behind what is already behind your relative front is in front of you. You can't defend the idiom by saying "No. Because my face has a nose and my but has no tail and stop signs are red to get your attention what is back is further than the moon so behind your back is Mars."