Case Sensitive drive, can't install illustrator

Question: I have a case sensitive drive on my macbook. I went to install Illustrator but I got the error that it can't be installed on a case sensitive partition (in 2013!!!). I went and partitioned my paltry 128 GB drive and made the new partition case insensitive.  After that I tried to install Illustrator and again, same error. It didn't even bother to look to see if there was a new drive. Are there any command line switches or anything I can use to force it to install on the new partition?
Comment: I know it's not a direct solution, but unless you really need the case sensitivity, it may be worth taking the hit now and redoing your core partition as vanilla HFS. Adobe products aren't the only ones that'll choke.
Comment: Complain to Adobe. You're paying them enough that they ought to be able to produce a functional product.
Comment: What are the actual filesystems you are using?
Answer: See https://bitbucket.org/lokkju/adobe_case_sensitive_volumes.
From the description: "adobe_case_sensitive_volumes is a function call hijacking library that forces volumes to look like they are case insensitive."
It's pretty hacky, involves creating a sparse bundle and some symbolic links to trick the installer into thinking that it's writing to a case-insensitive volume. But it does look like it was designed to solve just what you're trying to do.
See also this article on a more drastic solution (directly hacking the installer).
Comment: I don't suggest using third-party fixes like this.  Never mind if it works right now, Adobe may release updates which break it in obvious or subtle ways.  Plus you have to trust the developer of the third-party fix.  I agree with @tanantish above, if you don't have a reason to be in case-sensitive partition, then backup all of your files and make a clean install.


How do I use Carnauba or Beeswax for Candy?

Question: I am trying to make gummies and I want to use either Carnauba wax or bees wax to make a coating, anyone got any idea WHAT Carnauba or bees wax to use and how to apply it? I know they use a tumbler but do I use Carnauba granules? Mix it with oil? What?
Answer: For gummies in an industrial setting, these come pre-blended to simplify application and process.
In a kitchen or commercial setting, carnauba is usually applied as a finely ground powder because of the high melting temp.  For some applications like beeswax, cocoa butter, etc. a heated panner is common for the application of the hard shell.


User search box is disabled

Question: For some reason, the user search box on the redesigned users page is disabled. Enabling it with something like firebug still doesn't work. I presume this has something to do with the in-development redesign, but was this done on purpose or is it a bug? It's rather inconvenient not being able to find a user when I want to search for them, and Google doesn't seem to have any easy way to search for users on stack exchange sites.
Answer:
We disabled this for performance reasons, it was causing some pretty heavy load for a combination of reasons.  Worry not though, waffles is working on a new and improved method as I write this, the search box will make a return soon...along with some other enhancements to /users as well ;)

The search is back in full substring glory.
Answer: It seems this has been done deliberately, since there's a "disabled" property in the input field. I think they might still be working on the search function. Some development or testing might be going on at the moment.
The latest blog-entry shows the search-field enabled, so I assume it got disabled later on.
Answer: They are currently fixing some performance problems they had with user search
HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

User search box is disabled


ra for sun vs stars

Question: There is formula for stars sideral time:
$$ra - \arccos(-\tan(dec)*\tan(lat)).$$
where $ra$ - is right of ascension at the vernal equinox.
$lat$ = latitude
$dec$ = declination
Is it applicable for the sun with 0 $ra$ and 0 $decl$? If not, why not?
I want to use Need Simple equation for Rise, Transit, and Set time to get setting time and rising time of a star to code.
<code>for(int m=1;m<100;m++){
ts =2*M_PI*m+ (ra - acos(-tan(dec)*tan(lat))); // angle on each day iterating m
d=(ts-4.894961212735792 - longitude)/(6.30038809898489);
printf("%f since midnight", (d-0.5)/24); // d - 0.5 to handle midnight
}
</code>

I am not sure if my iteration is ok
d - 0.5
Answer: Firstly, there is no star's sidereal time. Sidereal time is dependent on the current date and time. It equals the star's right ascension plus its hour angle ... which is almost the formula you provided, since the hour angle is $acos(-tg({\delta})tg({\phi}))$ only when the star's altitude is zero (also, the minus should be a plus). Considering the right ascension added to the hour angle is constant for all points on the celestial sphere (since they are measured in the opposite direction, this sum will be the hour angle of the ${\gamma}$point),  this formula is valid for all points, including the Sun.
Comment: The code part was not there when I answered this ...

ra for sun vs stars


Fuel Economy Calculation

Question: There are 2 possible routes in the morning. A 19 Mile route (which is mainly motorway). Average speed is 60 Mph and the average mpg is 45. Or a 11 route, flat ground but it's mainly city so the average speed is 30Mph and the average mpg is 30. I would like to know which one would be more efficient and how would this be calculated. Thanks.
Comment: What you are not factoring in is the wear at tear on all the components - motorway driving tends to use the clutch less for example while city driving may involve several stop / starts using the clutch etc etc...
Comment: Assuming I would get the same MPG figures, I would choose the faster motorway route even on my hybrid vehicle that doesn't have clutch / transmission synchronizers and that primarily uses regenerative braking, saving the wear and tear on brake pads and discs (in reality, on hybrid highway MPG is about the same as city MPG). You didn't say you have a hybrid, so I think you save much on brakes, clutches and synchronizers on the longer highway route. And as a bonus, you save some time too.
Comment: Sounds like a homework question.
Answer: 11 miles divided by 30 (mpg) means you'll use around 0.37 of a gallon.
19 miles divided by 45 (mpg) means you'll use around 0.42 of a gallon.
Time wise, the 19 mile route at 60mph will take you 19 minutes (at 60mph you cover a mile a minute, however in order to obtain an average speed of 60mph over 19 miles you'll find you'll have to touch some very high speeds to counteract being stationary at the beginning and end of the journey).
The 11 mile route at 30mph will take 3 minutes longer, 22 minutes as at 30mph you cover 1 mile every two minutes.
Hopefully this helps answer your question.

Fuel Economy Calculation


How do you Get the Unity Launcher to Autohide underneath other windows while not autohiding when all Windows are un-maximised?

Question: That is suppose you have google chrome open or some other program how can we get the unity launcher to autohide when it (the program) is open and maximised but to reappear when it's unmaximised (i.e. it doesn't cover the entire desktop). I am running 12.10
Answer: You can't. You can either let the launcher hide always, or never. "Intellihide" and "dodge windows" are removed from unity since ubuntu 12.10
Answer: Short answer: you can't, or at least not by default. However, if you install Unity Tweak Tool, I think it may let you do this.
Comment: They removed that capability from Unity itself, so Ubuntu-Tweak can't do it.
Comment: @jesusiniesta Had a feeling that was the case, I'll edit my answer.
Answer: They removed that capability from Unity, as far as I know, so as handuel said: you can't... but.
There is thogh a custom build of unity that re-enable a similar behaviour, in which the dock will hide only when it would collide with a window. This is not official code from Canonical, but it comes from an, IMHO, very reliable source, webupd8.
You can install such a patched version of Unity (from webupd8 great repositories):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update

And then, to get the "real" Unity Dodge Windows
sudo apt-get install unity-dodge-windows

Once installed, press ALT + F2 and run:
unity-dodge-windows

Source, from webupd8: http://www.webupd8.org/2013/02/how-to-get-unity-launcher-window-dodge.html
Comment: I'm afraid this does not solve my problem. The unity launcher disappear indiscriminately, i.e. it does not reappear when all windows are out of its way or even when they're all minimised. I went to alter the behaviour of the unity launcher with System Settings -- Appearance and this failed because when I switched the launcher not to autohide it immediately reverted back to autohide. Plus the launcher still reappears when I go to the left-hand corner of my page even when other programs are overlapping it.
Comment: Sad to hear that. Did you try setting "Have file manager handle the desktop" to OFF?
Comment: I'm afraid it still has this problem even after this adjustment


Named ITable removal

Question: I am dynamically creating a join between a GeoFeatureLayer and an external ITable derived from a SQL query and opened with OpenQueryClass(). It works. Now if I could only delete the Join!? But even worse than that: when I re-enter the code that creates a new join (after I run some code that seems to remove the existing joined fields from the GeoFeatureLayer) it fails to create the ITable the 2nd time because "The FeatureClass already exists." So it appears that not only must I reset the GeoFeatureLayer I must also remove the named ITable.  Is this correct?  If so, how?
Comment: Does this thread help at all? http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/11088/how-do-i-remove-a-join-between-a-standalone-table-and-a-feature-layer-with-arc
Comment: I'm running some of that code to remove the join but nothing in that code addresses the issue with the named ITable I'm creating from SQL. The removal runs, it appears to work (I'm not going to allow multiple joins) and then the code goes to create a new join and runs into the OpenQueryClass() call and fails because "The Feature Class already exists."

I can randomize the name with a Guid and it will all work but I worry that the orphaned table is a "bad thing" that will never go away until no memory is left.
Answer: Since the ITable must be created outside of a ComReleaser (and kept alive I presume while the in-memory join is active!)  I discovered that the following code actually does release the 'named' table and thus allows me to use the same 'name' again so the renderer or annotations created when the original join was made continue to work with the updated join.
<code>Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject( relQueryTable.DestinationTable );
Marshal.FinalReleaseComObject( relQueryTable );
</code>
As I read the help, DestinationTable is not required (but it didn't work correctly every time unless I included it!)

Named ITable removal


Why are you not able to declare a class as static in Java?

Question: Why are you not able to declare a class as static in Java?
Comment: Counter-question: what would you expect the effect to be, if you declared a top-level class to be `static`?
Comment: @Joachim Sauer: Well, C# interprets `static` classes as `abstract final`, i.e., they can't be instantiated and can't be extended. This means they can only contain static members, which is useful for classes that only contain helper methods.
Comment: @bcat this is true for C#, but a java class can be either abstract or final, not both. To prevent a class from being instantiated, one can declare a private constructor.
Comment: @JoachimSauer Simple, I'd love to force all the member in the class to be static (maybe with even have to declare on each method or property).
Comment: No, you can't, except for static inner classes. But, what do you want to achieve with that?
Comment: classes are actually static in the sense that they don't belong to an instance.
Comment: See also: [*Static Classes In Java*](https://stackoverflow.com/q/7486012/642706)
Comment: @JoachimSauer and OP, please see my answer. The currently accepted answer is somewhere between deficient and incorrect (see my comment on that answer and my answer itself).
Answer: Only nested classes can be static. By doing so you can use the nested class without having an instance of the outer class.
class OuterClass {
    public static class StaticNestedClass {
    }

    public class InnerClass {
    }

    public InnerClass getAnInnerClass() {
        return new InnerClass();
    }

    //This method doesn't work
    public static InnerClass getAnInnerClassStatically() {
        return new InnerClass();
    }
}

class OtherClass {
    //Use of a static nested class:
    private OuterClass.StaticNestedClass staticNestedClass = new OuterClass.StaticNestedClass();

    //Doesn't work
    private OuterClass.InnerClass innerClass = new OuterClass.InnerClass();

    //Use of an inner class:
    private OuterClass outerclass= new OuterClass();
    private OuterClass.InnerClass innerClass2 = outerclass.getAnInnerClass();
    private OuterClass.InnerClass innerClass3 = outerclass.new InnerClass();
}

Sources :

Oracle tutorial on nested classes

On the same topic :

Java: Static vs non static inner class
Java inner class and static nested class
Comment: You're most certainly right; but I don't see how this answers the question
Comment: That's true, but the question you're thinking about usually solves itself when you start to ask yourself what a "static class" would be. In java, a static element means that you can access/invoke it without an instance of the enclosing class; what that could possibly mean if you apply the keyword to the class itself? What are your intentions? What would you expect? Now that you have an idea of what it could be, I'm pretty sure that it will be either "not really make sense" or it will be "far fetched" (it would make sense, but it the end it's just a choice that has been made).
Comment: +1 despite the first phrase not being exact. As the tutorial states "Non-static nested classes are called inner classes." (JLS: "An inner class is a nested class that is not explicitly or implicitly declared static.")
Comment: @Carlos Heuberger, you're right, I updated the post. @Joeri Hendrickx, The question was, "why a class can't be declared as static ..?", they can, and [read my post here]. It's an explanation about the usage of static classes and why they have to be nested-classes.
Comment: The solution given here are fine... But I still wonder y ppl have not explained logically that static class are not possible in java..some OOPs concept explanation would be the right answer. I am awaiting for it
Comment: The answer, or at least the opening sentence, is wrong: "Only nested classes can be static." See my answer below for the correct, full and brief explanation. The interpretation of this answer that comes closest to being correct but still incomplete is: "Only nested classes can be explicitly marked as static." (@JoeriHendrickx fyi)
Answer: Top level classes are static by default. Inner classes are non-static by default. You can change the default for inner classes by explicitly marking them static. Top level classes, by virtue of being top-level, cannot have non-static semantics because there can be no parent class to refer to. Therefore, there is no way to change the default for top-level classes.
Comment: »Top level classes are static by default.« This is the best answer. They are static because you don't need any instance of anything to refer to them. They can be referred to from anywhere. They're in *static storage* (as in C storage classes). - As others have noted (Iain Elder in a comment to another answer), the language designers could have allowed the `static` keyword on a top-level class to denote and enforce that it may only contain static members, and not be instantiated; that could, however, have confused people as `static` has a different meaning for nested classes.
Answer: So, I'm coming late to the party, but here's my two cents - philosophically adding to Colin Hebert's answer.
At a high level your question deals with the difference between objects and types.  While there are many cars (objects), there is only one Car class (type).  Declaring something as static means that you are operating in the "type" space.  There is only one.  The top-level class keyword already defines a type in the "type" space.  As a result "public static class Car" is redundant.
Comment: Yes.  To put it another way, top level classes are static by default, so there's no need for the keyword.
Comment: Well, I would add to what Warren Dew said-"top level classes are static by default when accessing static members".
Comment: Underrated answer. A new keyword to force every method in a class to be static and the constructor private would be nice. I wouldn't name it static because that's just confusing.
Comment: @G_V Although java could create such a monster, Java almost goes out of it's way to make stupid things difficult.  Statics are a bad idea in general, static classes are horrible (Worse than singletons which are themselves considered an anti-pattern).  Many people don't understand this so giving it a keyword would be a very bad idea.  Instead we make bad things difficult and just leave it at that.  Note that there is no "Singleton" keyword either.  and no Property keyword.  These all cause bad code (Although people still use Properties so much that Java might as well support them)
Answer: Class with private constructor is static.
Declare your class like this:
public class eOAuth {

    private eOAuth(){}

    public final static int    ECodeOauthInvalidGrant = 0x1;
    public final static int    ECodeOauthUnknown       = 0x10;
    public static GetSomeStuff(){}

}

and you can used without initialization:
if (value == eOAuth.ECodeOauthInvalidGrant)
    eOAuth.GetSomeStuff();
...

Comment: In case anyone is wondering what is going on here, this matches the C# definition of a "static class" - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/79b3xss3%28v=vs.90%29.aspx . Given the Java definition of "static class", all non-inner classes are static (see sibling answers).
Comment: It's not static, but contains static properties. If you write public final int    ECodeOauthUnknown       = 0x10; it's not static anymore.
Comment: Aside from @user1883212 is right, I'd even say that this answer confuses the reader that the private constructor is somehow important here, while it really doesn't matter at all.
Comment: In the .NET world, if a class is marked both abstract and final (the effect of a `static class` declaration in C#), the compiler won't even allow code to declare variables of that type, nor use it as a generic type parameter.  A mere lack of accessible constructors in a class which could otherwise be either instantiated or inherited would not preclude declaration of variables of that type, nor its use as a generic type parameter.
Comment: This answer is completely incorrect. Private constructors have nothing to do with it. The code is only an example of a class with nothing but static attributes and methods. It has nothing to do with static classes.
Comment: What is this? `public static GetSomeStuff(){}`
Answer: You can create a utility class (which cannot have instances created) by declaring an enum type with no instances. i.e. you are specificly declaring that there are no instances.
public enum MyUtilities {;
   public static void myMethod();
}

Comment: an enumeration as a type is a specific expectation: it is an enumerated set of items. Using it for a "utility class", when you could otherwise just have a class with a private constructor, is semantically confusing.
Comment: @VisionarySoftwareSolutions To me, this specificity says there are no instances of this class, rather than indirectly making it impossible to create instances of a class.
Answer: Sure they can, but only inner nested classes. There, it means that instances of the nested class do not require an enclosing instance of the outer class.
But for top-level classes, the language designers couldn't think of anything useful to do with the keyword, so it's not allowed.
Comment: Although a top-level class can't be declared `static`, it would sometimes make sense to be able to. For example, a class containing only static helper methods makes no sense to be instantiated, but the Java language doesn't stop you from doing it.

You can make the class non-instantiable (and practically 'static') to other classes by declaring the default constructor `private`, which forbids instantiation because no constructor is visible.
Comment: +1 despite the first phrase not being exact. As the JLS states: "An inner class is a nested class that is not explicitly or implicitly declared static." (Just terminology, i know...)
Answer: public class Outer {
   public static class Inner {}
}

... it can be declared static - as long as it is a member class.
From the JLS:

Member classes may be static, in which case they have no access to the instance variables of the surrounding class; or they may be inner classes (§8.1.3).

and here:

The static keyword may modify the declaration of a member type C within the body of a non-inner class T. Its effect is to declare that C is not an inner class. Just as a static method of T has no current instance of T in its body, C also has no current instance of T, nor does it have any lexically enclosing instances.

A static keyword wouldn't make any sense for a top level class, just because a top level class has no enclosing type.
Comment: If it's not inner why call it `Inner`? `Nested` would have been a less confusing choice.
Answer: As explained above, a Class cannot be static unless it's a member of another Class.
If you're looking to design a class "of which there cannot be multiple instances", you may want to look into the "Singleton" design pattern.
Beginner Singleton info here.
Caveat:

If you are thinking of using the
  singleton pattern, resist with all
  your might. It is one of the easiest
  DesignPatterns to understand, probably
  the most popular, and definitely the
  most abused.
  (source: JavaRanch as linked above)
Answer: In addition to how Java defines static inner classes, there is another definition of static classes as per the C# world [1]. A static class is one that has only static methods (functions) and it is meant to support procedural programming. Such classes aren't really classes in that the user of the class is only interested in the helper functions and not in creating instances of the class. While static classes are supported in C#, no such direct support exists in Java. You can however use enums to mimic C# static classes in Java so that a user can never create instances of a given class (even using reflection)  [2]:
public enum StaticClass2 {
    // Empty enum trick to avoid instance creation
    ; // this semi-colon is important

    public static boolean isEmpty(final String s) {
        return s == null || s.isEmpty();
    }
}

Answer: Everything we code in java goes into a class. Whenever we run a class JVM instantiates an object. JVM can create a number of objects, by definition Static means you have the same set of copy to all objects.
So, if Java would have allowed the top class to be static whenever you run a program it creates an Object and keeps overriding on to the same Memory Location.
If You are just replacing the object every time you run it whats the point of creating it?
So that is the reason Java got rid of the static for top-Level Class.
There might be more concrete reasons but this made much logical sense to me.
Comment: Inner classes are associated with outer classes and that's the reason they can be static, as you have a different object to depend on.
Comment: You mean 'that's the reason they can *not* be static'.
Answer: The only classes that can be static are inner classes. The following code works just fine:
public class whatever {
    static class innerclass {
    }
}

The point of static inner classes is that they don't have a reference to the outer class object.
Comment: 'static inner' is a contradiction in terms. 'static' and 'inner' are mutually exclusive. The word you're looking for is 'nested', not 'inner'.
Answer: I think this is possible as easy as drink a glass of coffee!.
Just take a look at this.
We do not use static keyword explicitly while defining class.
public class StaticClass {

    static private int me = 3;
    public static void printHelloWorld() {
       System.out.println("Hello World");
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        StaticClass.printHelloWorld();
        System.out.println(StaticClass.me);
    }
}

Is not that a definition of static class?
We just use a function binded to just a class.
Be careful that in this case we can use another class in that nested.
Look at this:
class StaticClass1 {

    public static int yum = 4;

    static void  printHowAreYou() {
        System.out.println("How are you?");
    }
}

public class StaticClass {

    static int me = 3;
    public static void printHelloWorld() {
       System.out.println("Hello World");
       StaticClass1.printHowAreYou();
       System.out.println(StaticClass1.yum);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        StaticClass.printHelloWorld();
        System.out.println(StaticClass.me);
    }
}

Comment: I think we can consider such classes as static class by refer to static class definition not by just using static keyword as a qualifier.
Comment: Be sure to create a private constructor, or else you would be able to say `new StaticClass()` and that doesn't really make much sense. With a private constructor it would not allow instances of it.
Answer: One can look at PlatformUI in Eclipse for a class with static methods and private constructor with itself being final.
public final class <class name>
{
   //static constants
   //static memebers
}

Answer: if the benefit of using a static-class was not to instantiate an object and using a method then just declare the class as public and this method as static.


Ubuntu freezing after coming back from sleep

Question: Ever since upgrading from 17.10 to 18.04, I've struggled with this odd issue: when the laptop wakes up from sleep and I enter the password, it freezes - only shows me the default Ubuntu purple screen and an immovable cursor that doesn't look like my theme-set cursor.
I had a problem with 17.10 as well, but not as annoying - when waking up from sleep, I couldn't move the cursor for about 15 seconds, but otherwise everything worked fine.
Another problem that may be related but that I cannot reproduce: sometimes (while using the computer), I see the "Computer will suspend due to inactivity" notification and then it suspends itself. Usually, when trying to wake it back up, what I mentioned above happens, but once something else happened: it managed to wake up, but my session was gone, as if I had just rebooted.
I have an ASUS ZenBook UX410UQ.
Answer: I have the same problem but, here, I have accidentally found a work-around: I leave an 18.04 bootable USB stick mounted, and as long as it is left there, resumption is faultless. Should I dare to remove it, the problem appears again.
I know it sounds crazy but I can assure you it works, although I cannot offer an explanation as to the why.


Problem with qiskit only accepting ${\rm tr}(\rho^2)=1.$ while performing state tomography

Question: I am performing state tomography after a computation cycle in order to store information about the state before measurement and use that information to re-initialise the state for the new cycle of computation. I came across the following problem: while trying to re-initialize the state to the pre-measurement one for the next computation round python flags an error 'Sum of amplitudes-squared not equal to one'. I understand this is due to the degree of approximation included in reconstructing the density matrix through tomography and if I go checking, $tr(\rho^{2})=1.00000000000000009$ or something like that, although it seems qiskit will only accept 1.0 precisely. I'm trying to find ways to work around this problem, does anybody have an idea? I'm attaching a pictorial representation of the cycle.
Answer: You can convert the density matrix to a StateVector using to_statevector() method and set a suitable value for atol (absolute tolerance) parameter. Then pass this statevector to initialize()
from qiskit.quantum_info import Statevector, DensityMatrix

rho = DensityMatrix([
    [0.36, 0.480006],
    [0.480006, 0.640016]
])

sv = rho.to_statevector(atol=1E-5)
circuit.initialize(sv)

Comment: Thanks for the answer, this actually works. Unfortunately my simulation is aimed to be actually an executable on real quantum hardware so all things related to the Statevector module are not fitting for my situation, as far as I understand.


How can I control many LEDs with just a few pins on my micro?

Question: I am using an Atmel ATtiny13 which has a 6-pin I/O. I'd like to control about 15 LEDs but am unsure how to connect everything. Without multiplexing of any sort, it seems I'd only be able to control 6 LEDs at a time. Am I limited to only 6 LEDs because of the size of the microcontroller?
Comment: Don't forget to compare your options against the cost of buying a slightly pinnier microcontroller. Also pay attention to the per-port and total current limits.
Comment: @joeforker You're right, the cost for a micro with more pins was pretty minimal, considering my project was a one-off. I thought at one point about using a micro with about 20 IO pins to accomplish the job, but one of my goals was a very small circuitboard footprint. Also, awesome adjective ***pinnier***!
Comment: I had not seen. Possibly duplicated: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/9860/what-is-needed-to-control-200-leds-from-an-arduino
Comment: When I began working with micros a while ago, this is a question I wished had been easy to find with clear answers. I managed to learn about charlieplexing and successfully implement it, but I wanted to recreate the question here with the excellent quality of SE-community answers.
Comment: Duplicate: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/1609/how-many-individual-lights-can-an-arduino-control
Comment: @mjh: I wanted to post a question worded in this way because at one time I would have found it immensely helpful. The question you reference is specific to an Arduino though certainly the principle is identical.
Answer: There are several methods which can be used to drive large numbers of LEDs from a few IO pins.
The simplest is standard row/column display multiplexing.  With this technique, you can drive \$( n / 2 )^2\$ LEDs with \$n\$ IO pins. Mathematically, the duty cycle is:
$$\frac{1}{minimum(\text{unique row patterns, unique column patterns})}$$
This means that this technique has a duty cycle of 100% when all LEDs are lit (or all rows or all columns are identical) and a duty cycle of \$1 / n\$ when a diagonal line needs to be lit (or all the rows are different).  You're only guaranteed 100% duty cycle when lighting every LED or one LED (or zero LEDs, but that doesn't really count for much).
Slightly more complex is Charlieplexing.  With this technique, you can drive \$n^2 - n\$ LEDs with \$n\$ IO pins. Only \$n - 1\$ LEDs can be lit simultaneously with this technique.  Mathematically, the duty cycle is:
$$\frac{1}{\text{minimum simultaneous sets}}$$
where a simultaneous set is a unique group of LEDs which has a common anode or common cathode.  (This hasn't been proven, it's just what I arrived at after pondering the problem for a minute.  If duty cycle is important to you, you'll want to look into this further.) This is a much more complex calculation both intellectually and computationally than the equivalent calculation for standard multiplexing.  Effectively, you get a duty cycle of \$1 / n\$ when all LEDs are lit but some (only some) patterns of n-1 or fewer LEDs can have a duty cycle of 100%.  You're only guaranteed 100% duty cycle when lighting 1 LED.
The last method I'll mention is to use a shift register or IO expander.  With two pins (Either the raw data/clock interface, I2C, or unidirectional SPI), you can control an arbitrarily large number of LEDs. The duty cycle for any pattern is 100%, but the update rate is inversely proportional to the number of LEDs.  This is the most costly method.  For 15 LEDs, it will probably be cheaper to just upgrade to a micro with that many IO pins.
Comment: +1 for explaining a bit about the duty cycle aspect. In the second sentence about Charlieplexing, did you mean "drive *n^2-n* **LED's** with *n* IO pins?
Comment: Charlieplexing can be done very similarly to multiplexing, if one simply omits one light from each row.  Actually, it may be possible to "regain" that light by adding a diode, though unless column drivers are constant-current outputs, making it match the brightness of the others may be difficult.
Answer: Using Charlieplexing you can directly drive \$n \times (n-1)\$ LEDs from \$n\$ pins.
Exemple:
Six LED's on 3 Pins:
<code>PINS        LEDS
0 1 2   1 2 3 4 5 6
0 0 0   0 0 0 0 0 0
0 1 Z   1 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 Z   0 1 0 0 0 0
Z 0 1   0 0 1 0 0 0
Z 1 0   0 0 0 1 0 0
0 Z 1   0 0 0 0 1 0
1 Z 0   0 0 0 0 0 1
0 0 1   0 0 1 0 1 0
0 1 0   1 0 0 1 0 0
0 1 1   1 0 0 0 1 0
1 0 0   0 1 0 0 0 1
1 0 1   0 1 1 0 0 0
1 1 0   0 0 0 1 0 1
1 1 1   0 0 0 0 0 0
</code>
Comment: Another way of drawing the schematic is as an NxN grid, but driving columns only, and replacing the primary diagonal with row-column shorts.
Comment: Thank you for the output pin dataset as well as a helpful schematic.
Comment: means I cannot turn all of them on at once? Does that mean If I want to turn all of them on at once I have to do time-plexing enough to fool the eyes?
Comment: @MaNyYaCk Yes. You're right.
Answer: Without multiplexing (direct drive) you are limited to 6 LEDs.
With charlieplexing you can drive n*(n-1) LEDs from n pins.
With I/O expanders or shift registers you can drive a virtually unlimited number of LEDs.
Example: MCP23008 8-bit I2C I/O Expander
Comment: An I/O expander is external chip that contains I/O pins and registers. You can use standard communication bus like I2C or SPI to communicate with them.
Comment: Can you elaborate on what I/O expanders would be?
Comment: +1 You can drive a lot of LEDs with TI's TLC594 (http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tlc5940.pdf), but it may be overkill for many jobs. http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&name=TLC5940NTG4-ND
Comment: Thanks - I should design a project that makes use of I/O expanders to force my learning of their usage.
Answer: As @mjh2007 suggested with an I2C expander.  But there are  ones specifically for driving LEDs which will avoid the need for external current-limiting resistors.
Answer: Here's an example of charlieplexing that I have built.
It's a lighthouse beam simulator and uses a series of 12 LEDs charlieplexed to 4 GPIOs to sweep a beam of light around a disc. There's a video of it here.
The project is PIC based, I use a PIC12f683 which is also an 8pin uP and could be considered comparable to the 8pin AVRs.
The LED's intensity is driven by an interupt that provides a 32 step PWM at around 60Hz. Only two LEDs are allowed to be lit at any one time giving a 50% duty for each LED as that was all I needed. It also gives a good trade off of PWM refresh rate against resolution.
The coding for using charlieplexing as actually pretty simple if you stick to the "classic" method of only lighting a single LED at any one point in time at a very fast refresh rate.  I work out the required PORT and TRIS (pic specific registers) first on paper then store the results in a static array.  To light LED x the PIC just has to lookup the value at the array's index[x] and write them directly to the PORT (with a bit of masking to preserve the state of the other pins not used in the charliplex)
My project only has 12 LED not 15 or the maximum 20 the 5 GPIO will allow as I wanted to keep one GPIO spare for future development.
Anyway... I just thought it might be helpfull to have a working example similar to your request.
Full source code and schematics are available on my blog.
Answer: Another option would be to use the Neopixel LEDs. They have a built-in control IC and you only need one pin to control as many LEDs as you like. Of course you will need an adequate separate LED power source then.


Scrum Newbie: Internal Stories

Question: I am trying to implement Scrum and have some basic questions.  I understand creating stories to implement end user functionality, but where does a "meta-task" like collecting requirements for the stories in the first place come from?  Is this even before the story process begins?  I guess I am struggling with the fact that a project starts up at some point, and then tasks like "get requirements" and "create user stories" are needed, but those are also part of the project and need to be captured somewhere.  Do they fit into Scrum stories?  Are they part of a sprint?  It seems like they should be, but creating stories for them seems recursive...I hope that makes sense.  Thanks!
Comment: This can be related: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/61529/how-does-a-scrum-team-account-for-infrastructure-tasks-in-the-planning-meeting
Answer: To get requirements and to write user stories are not tasks.  They are a full-time job.  The product owner's job.
What you describe in your question is "Iteration 0" when the requirements are discovered and user stories are written.  Then the team goes to work and implements them in Iterations 1 through N.
But requirement discovery never stops.  The product owner can at any future moment add or delete requirements, merge or split up user stories, and re-prioritize them.  This is how agile does adaptive planning ("responding to change over following a plan").
Answer: The short answer is <code>"No, there should be no stories created for tasks which deal with managing the SCRUM process itself"</code>.
User Stories are exclusively for describing user-oriented (or also "owner-oriented") features which will be implemented into the product.
I think that the main reason for not mixing these with meta tasks (such as creating user stories, rating them etc.) is that meta tasks typically imply a particular sequence relative to other tasks, whereby user stories can be implemented in any order, in the very first sprint or the very last.  Certainly, the way stories are rated and prioritized by the Team and the Product Master influence the order in which they are introduced into the product, but ideally they are independent from one another and hence interchangeable with regards to planning.
It is often hard enough to select a good set of stories for a given sprint without adding further confusion with meta tasks.
Meta tasks (such as creating stories, planning a Sprint, scheduling daily SCRUMs and various administrative tasks) are therefore part of the SCRUM process.  They are built-in the framework and are not explicitly tracked.
Comment: @mjv - Thanks for your response.  I have an additional question.  If the additional tasks aren't tracked inside of SCRUM (which I agree is reasonable), don't they need to be tracked at "some level?"  When doing a project and saying "we need to get this sprint done in X amount of time" there has to be somewhere to capture all of the additional "stuff" that needs to be done that doesn't directly relate to the sprint, but yet eats up person hours.
Comment: @skaz, time spent on those tasks should be tracked (if you need to track them at all) as part of the individual stories.
Comment: @Marcie - but mjv's whole point above was that these should NOT be tracked in stories.
Answer: Scrum is for builders (developers). The things you are talking about are done by product owners. Product Owners are a part of Scrum in that they facilitate the process, but in their own work they do not do Scrum.
I worked for a company that did try having the Product Management group (actually, every group but Sales) do Scrum. Every group but the developers abandoned it within months.
Some of the principles like task breakdown and assignments were preserved, but velocity and sprints were some of the things that didn't really work.
Answer: As a sidenote, I also recommend that the Porduct Owner prioritizes each User-Story. The story with the highest priority is done first, same for the story-tasks.
Answer: Specifically, "collecting requirements" is part of the development process for each individual Sprint backlog item.  So any estimate for a SB item needs to be "soup to nuts", from sitting down with the user to discuss what they really want right through to final acceptance testing.
Product Backlog items, on the other hand, need to have only enough detail in them so that everyone understands knows they're talking about the same thing when they refer to it. So a PB item with only one word, "Bagels!" is fine as long as everyone knows what that means.  That's why User Stories are popular, because they give a one sentence description that tells everyone everything they need to do the planning.  As mentioned above, going from that simple description to detailed specifications is part of the development work done in the Sprint.
So the overhead for the Team in maintaining the PB is minimal, and continually happens in tiny little chunks of effort throughout the project.  When you get close to Sprint planning, the developers may need to provide very rough estimates for the higher priority PB items, but these really don't need to take more than a few minutes each.

Scrum Newbie: Internal Stories


How would I setup Joomla to require or bypass authentication based on visitors IP address?

Question: How would I setup Joomla to require or bypass authentication based on visitors IP address?
I would like to setup a Joomla website that requires visitors to login, unless they are visiting from a specific IP address or subnet.
Also, I would like the login to be LDAP based.
I would be hosting the Joomla site on my local network and exposing it via my router with port-forwarding.
Answer: An authentication plugin is what you need. It is not so difficult as it may seem. In the "/plugins/authentication/" folder of your Joomla site you already can see authentication methods available;

traditional Joomla (users in a database)
gmail
openid
ldap

You can surely find on extensions site other auth plugins; or, if you have some PHP skill, you can build your own since all an authentication plugin has to return is success or failure.


RDS Postgres could not be upgraded because one or more databases do not allow connections

Question: I'm using AWS RDS to run a Postgres server, and I'm trying to do a major upgrade from 9.6.11 to 10.15. I'm using aws-cli to request the upgrade, like this:
aws rds modify-db-instance
  --db-instance-identifier my-database
  --engine-version 10.15
  --db-parameter-group-name my-pg10
  --option-group-name my-pg10
  --allow-major-version-upgrade
  --apply-immediately

The database changes from "Available" into "Upgrading" state, then 2-3 minutes later it goes back to "Available" and the version is unchanged. A new file called error/pg_upgrade_precheck.log.1613891689533 appears in the logs tab, and the content looks like this:
------------------------------------------------------------------
Upgrade could not be run on Sun Feb 21 07:14:49 2021
------------------------------------------------------------------
The instance could not be upgraded from 9.6.11.R1 to 10.15.R1 because of following reasons.
Please take appropriate action on databases that have usages incompatible with requested
major engine version upgrade and try again.
- The instance could not be upgraded because one or more databases do not allow connections.
Please ensure all non-template0 databases allow connections and try again.
----------------------- END OF LOG ----------------------

I tried doing a major upgrade to a different version (10.7) and that failed the same way. I tried doing a minor upgrade to 9.6.20 and that worked just fine.
I'm stumped. How do I make progress upgrading this database?
Answer: The Postgres docs describe how databases can be available or unavailable for connection.
It turns out that I had a few other databases hidden away inside this RDS db instance. Here's how I found them:
SELECT datname, datallowconn
FROM pg_catalog.pg_database;

Then once I found them, simply re-enabling connections on each database was sufficient.
ALTER DATABASE <name> allow_connections true;

After doing this, the major upgrade completed successfully.


Is it correct to use のこと with 読む?

Question: Is 「Aのこと読んだ。」a correct sentence?
I know that usually「Aについて読んだ。」is the correct way of saying "I read about A", but I've seen sentences like 「Aのこと考える」and just wondering if it's correct to substitute 考える with 読む.
Answer: In any (even slightly) formal situations, 「~~のこと読{よ}んだ」 would surely be considered incorrect and rather sloppy.  You would want to say:
・「~~について読んだ」 or
・「~~のことについて読んだ」
In extremely informal colloquial speech, however, one might hear 「~~のこと読んだ」.  It would still be "incorrect" but it will certainly convey what one wants to say.  It is not the kind of usage that I personally would recommend that Japanese-learners employ unless they are already on the native-speakers' level.  (But then, if one were already at that level, one would know that the phrase in question would only be situationally acceptable.)
Answer: Yes, 「Aのこと読んだ。」 is correct, though informal and therefore potentially socially incorrect, Japanese, as is「Aのこと考える」.
What makes 「Aのこと読んだ。」 and 「Aのこと考える」 informal is the omission of a postposition that shows the relationship between the noun phrase「Aのこと」 and the verbs 「読んだ」 and 「考える」, and the precepts of Proper Japanese prescribe against such looseness.
In the case of 「Aのこと読んだ。」 one of the postpostions that can go into the  empty slot is 「について」, so 「Aのことについて読んだ。」 would be a full and proper version of the sentence. (It could be the object marker 「を」 but 「Aのことを読んだ」would sound somewhat less natural.)
As for 「Aのこと考える」, the missing postposition can be 「について」, or it can be the object marker 「を」 as well. 「Aのことについて考える」 and 「Aのことを考える」 are equally fine and their meanings are more or less the same.

In case you think 「のこと」 is filling a role similar to that of 「について」, it is not.
「の + こと」 is a sequence made up of the genitive particle 「の」 plus the noun 「こと」, constituting a part of the noun phrase 「Aのこと」 (literally 'A's things' or 'things of A'). Or 「の」 can be a particle indicating apposition, in which case 「Aのこと」 (literally) means 'the thing that is you'. See What is the こと in sentences such as あなたのことが好きだ? for more on the semantics of the latter case of 「Xのこと」.
On the other hand, 「について」 is a compound postpostion heading the postpostional phrase 「Aについて」 ('about A').
Comment: So this is just a matter of choosing the right expression for the right social situation, right? When talking to friends and family 「Aのこと読んだ。」would sound just fine, whereas when talking to your boss it would sound totally out of place.
Comment: Omission of case particles like を definitely represents a low tier in the formal(high)-informal(low) scale, but it's not much of an impoliteness factor, though I know (in)formality and (im)politeness go hand in hand a lot of the time.
When talking to your boss (privately), saying "Aのことを読んだ。" (the particle retained, non-polite form of the verb) would be a lot worse than "Aのこと読みました。" (particle omitted, polite form of the verb)
Comment: The latter might, at worst, prompt him/her to chide you for occasion-inappropriate linguistic looseness ("Be a decent 社会人 and use proper Japanese at least in front of your boss, will you?") but he/she probably won't yell, "Omitting a case particle?! What insolence!", while the former is a clear and grave social offense under normal circumstances ("What insolence!" indeed).
Answer: No, 「Aのこと読んだ。」 is not a correct sentence. Just because you cannot read こと in Japanese. You can read about こと instead though.
Correct: 「Aのことについて読んだ。」

Is it correct to use のこと with 読む?


How to find the IP address of a router

Question: I live in a dorm where many students have setup small wireless networks. There are two of this networks that are very close to my room as the signal is very strong. Our college uses DHCP to assign IP addresses. I believe that these routers are on the college network along with my computer. I have the MAC addresses for the routers but how would I find the external IP address for the routers?
Answer: There is a way to find out if you modify the TTL values. You can do this using a tool such as hping, or simply traceroute (tracert in Windows).
I am connected to an access point, and I can do a traceroute to an outside IP address then see what the second "hop" is:
C:\>tracert google.com

Tracing route to google.com [22.214.171.124]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     2 ms     2 ms     2 ms  10.21.176.2
  2     4 ms     3 ms     2 ms  10.21.161.150
  3     7 ms     4 ms     6 ms  ^C (<-- I pressed control c to stop it)
C:\>

Here you can see that 10.21.176.2 is my gateway (Access point) and you can then determine which of these IP addresses in the range of your second hop (in my case 10.21.161.*, assuming it's a normal C class network) will reply straight away, this can be either scripted or done manually:
C:\>tracert -d 10.21.161.149

Tracing route to 10.21.161.149 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1     3 ms     2 ms     3 ms  10.21.176.2
  2     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  10.21.161.149

Trace complete.

We can keep on decreasing or increasing the last octet, again this is better if you'd script it (or run an hping with your ttl value set to 1):
C:\>tracert -d 10.21.161.142

Tracing route to 10.21.161.142 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1     2 ms     1 ms     3 ms  10.21.176.2
  2     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  10.21.161.142

Trace complete.

C:\>tracert -d 10.21.161.141

Tracing route to 10.21.161.141 over a maximum of 30 hops

  1     1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  10.21.161.141

Trace complete.

Since 10.21.161.141 is only one hop away, and it's not on my network (I am on 10.21.176.0/24), it is the outside interface of my gateway.  In my case, the access point.
Note: This won't work however if the access point blocks outgoing ICMP "TTL expired" messages, but normally they aren't configured that way.
Answer: Presumably what you've got is actually the BSSID of the router: this is router's "inside" MAC address.  Unless you can connect to the WiFi network, there is no reliable way to get the router's external IP address.  That said, many home routers have an external MAC address that is either one greater or one less than the BSSID.  For example, if the BSSID is 68:05:E7:02:7B:66, the external MAC is probably either 68:05:E7:02:7B:67 or 68:05:E7:02:7B:65.
I assume you don't have access to DHCP logs, switch management consoles, or any other network infrastructure.  In this situation, there's no easy way to turn a MAC address into an IP address: ARP only goes the other direction.  Instead, you need to do ARP resolution of each IP address on the network until you find the one with the MAC address you're looking for.  Linux provides tools such as "arp" and "arping" to do this; I presume Windows has similar tools.
Answer: DHCP is dynamic IP so every time you turned on the lap,it would be assigned with different IP and also noted that it would be connected to WiFi connection at a time so it would catches the strong signal near your room.You can use the following url
http://www.whatismyip.com/ip-address-lookup/
to find the external IP address that router is using to connect internet
Comment: ...or just query Google "my ip". https://www.google.com/search?q="my+ip"

How to find the IP address of a router


How are 2 Open IDs linked on StackExchange?

Question: I have an account with Google & Facebook. Login IDs for them both are same (same gmail id).
When logging into StackOverflow using either of Google or Facebook logins would link to same account.
How does that work?
Answer: Stackoverflow likely uses an internal id after you log into the site.  Then (after logging in) you can merge the other IDs.
If you sign in using the alternate ID and never merged them then they appear as separate accounts, even if the user is actually the same human.
Here is SO's source code for OpenID.  Let me know if you dig up something interesting, the folks at StackExchange write great code you can learn from
Comment: I have always used Google to log into SO, and for the first time I used Facebook and I was startled when it took me to the same account. The only reason I can think of is I use same Ids to log into Google & Facebook sites.
Comment: Actually I think you may have the remains of the SO Global Auth cookie.  There is a per-site cookie and one global auth cookie.  Sometimes things get screwy and so one or both cookies don't get cleared or set.  Then for whatever reason SO sees the remaining cookie and logs you in.  I think what you experienced was this occasional bug
Comment: Ok. Till now I have never manually linked these 2 logins in SO. After your suggestion, I cleared all active logins, cookies, and cache. And tried logging in with Facebook login and I am linked to the same account. This I think is not an 'occasional' bug. Its either a bug or a feature to link accounts if IDs are same.
Comment: @ReddySR Did you go to your account, click my logins and disconnect facebook before doing that test you mentioned?  If this is a bug you should report it to meta.stackoverflow.  I tried it myself and see it working normally.
Answer: I would say that stackoverflow links your account to any number of open ids. When you login with any of the linked open ids, you get logged into the stackoverflow site.
Comment: But aren't Google & Facebook 2 different OpenID providers? How are they linked by SO?


What is the earliest/easiest Summoner weapon to get pets in Terraria?

Question: I'm interested in trying to play as a Summoner, but at 20 hours in I have found zero items so far that allow me to summon minions.  What is the earliest/easiest summoner weapon to get?  I've looked at the Wiki but am having a hard time telling.  Is it the Slime Staff from the Slime King?  Thanks!
Comment: https://terraria.fandom.com/wiki/Summon_weapons#Pre-Hardmode Probably some of the ones found here.  But your question is a bit open ended and opinionated.
Comment: @Timmy - it was a bit open ended - I was hoping there was a clear answer I am missing but it doesn't seem like there is.  Thanks for the help
Comment: Pets and summons are different things. Pets do not do damage.
Comment: There is no such item as a "Slime Rod". There is a "Slime Staff", but it is not dropped by the King Slime.
Comment: @OrangeDog - thanks for the info - yes I meant minions not pets, and the Slime Staff.
Answer: The Finch Staff is the easiest summoner weapon to get in Journey Mode, because you start with it.
In other game modes it depends what you mean by "easy". Abigail's Flower only requires that you die, replace the tombstone, and wait. But you might be waiting a while.
The easiest one that doesn't rely on luck is the Hornet Staff. Kill the Queen Bee and you're guaranteed enough Bee Wax to craft it.


htaccess rewrite

Question: I am working on a project and it utilizes a shortened url for redirection, I've gotten the following code to work perfectly:
XBitHack      Off
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI} \/([0-9A-Za-z]{4})$ [NC]
RewriteRule   ^(.*) ./getdeck.php?deck=%1 [L]

Now I want to add a second redirect rule for /a/([0-9A-Za-z]{4} but no matter how I write it, the new rule fails. Can anyone help explain what I'm missing?
Examples I have tried:
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI} ^/a/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule   ^(.*) ./deck/makedeck.php?deck=%1 [L]

or
RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI} ^/a/([0-9A-Za-z]{4})$ [NC]
RewriteRule   ^(.*) ./deck/makedeck.php?deck=%1 [L]

Answer: You might have to repeat the first two conditions.

htaccess rewrite


export actual documents from document tab not from files, attachments object

Question: I have three documents(like image, pdf, word etc) in my documents tab(Please note: not on attachments, files object) and I need to export all the three to my local.
But when I tried to get that through data loader or dataloader.io I am getting only csv not the docs(image, pdf,word etc). May I know if it is possible to get or not possible to get. In data export also we don't have document object.
The reason for this requirement is, I need to upload all the documents from document object to files object.
Thank you.
Comment: If its a total of 3 documents, why don't you download each one individually then upload them as files manually?
Comment: Hi Shamina, for example I have mentioned three documents, but there will be many documents uploaded every day. on weekly basis I need to download the documents from documents tab and uploaded in files.
Answer: If the migration needs to be done in same org then there is no need to download the files in the local, you can create a apex script to query the documents and create files on the basis of the data queried.
In case if there are lots of documents then you would need to run the script in batch
Also in case if you want to download the data in file format over your local that can't be done via dataloader or workbench as base 64 data can not be exported in to csv, you can use dataloader.io to export the data as files but it comes with its limits on number of records you can export in free edition.
or
export the data in bulk xml via workbench and then convert base 64 xml to files via node js or via some local script
Comment: Hi Sumit, Yes, I wanted to migrate document(images, word) from documents tab to files in salesforce. Can you please provide if you have any apex script?


Is courage the victory of the beautiful over the sublime?

Question: Assumption behind the question: Kant variously divided the aesthetic types into two or three: the agreeable, the beautiful, and the sublime. Somewhere (in the SEP or IEP, I don't remember), I was reading about a similar division into five: the beautiful, the sublime, the tragic, the comical, and the horrible or ugly (I think). We assume here instead that every (family of) emotion has an "aesthetic interpolant," so that e.g. the interpolant affiliated with fear (historically, the sublime) is perhaps different from that affiliated with anger (though rage can be terrifying, we should note). In at least one case, that of saudade or love, we suppose that the emotion is its own interpolant (or something along that line, anyway).
Formulation of the question: If beauty is like pleasure or even happiness, but the sublime is fearsome, then does courage a priori consist in prioritizing the beauty of virtue over virtue's sublime aspects?R Assuming, that is, that neither of these two representations (the beautiful and the sublime) is "escapable," neither can be foregone from this scene because any moral theory will at least at some juncture face this specific priority problem (of a beautiful vs. a sublime (or worse) theorem, so to speak). If we must allow for duty's fearsome demeanor (betimes),A yet we ought to focus more on its joyful light, perhaps.
Put another way: is courage when joy triumphs over fear? There is a gleeful defiance of fear, the bliss of resistance. Hume at one point speaks of joy and courage "in the same breath":

...since the soul, when elevated with joy and courage, in a manner seeks opposition, and throws itself with alacrity into any scene of thought or action, where its courage meets with matter to nourish and employ it.

And Paul Tillich talks about a sort of ontological courage:

Courage is the self-affirmation of being in spite of the fact of non-being. It is the act of the individual self in taking the anxiety of non-being upon itself by affirming itself... in the anxiety of guilt and condemnation...

Kant himself does say something somewhere about being cheerful even in an imperfect world,K but he also cautioned against "enthusiasm" and overly heroicized portrayals of do-gooders (for his commentary on "enthusiasm," see the third Critique). Still, we can imagine finding the purest joy in the particular success we have in life, rather than in obsessing over vague magnitudes of general happiness from now to eternity. So even if the happiness that defeats horror is, as courage, pure unto extremity, this doesn't mean that those who achieve courage are performing a classically "heroic deed," and they are able to submit that their enthusiasm is not meant to influence public reason but only to animate their own other genuinely courageous actions for a personal (aesthetic) kind of reason.
Metaphorically speaking, does participating in the Form of Courage mean participating in the victory of the Form of the Beautiful over the Form of the Sublime, or the Form of Joy over that of Fear? How essential is the "combat imagery" of courage (as a thick ethical concept) to the intended representation of its nature, or can we yet abstract to a more general or alternative imagery if we really so wish, here?Z (For example, instead of representing the Forms of Good and Evil, say, as combatants, one might represent the Good as an inculpably abused romantic partner of Evil, and the moral narrative's outcome is that they "break up" as the Good learns to distrust Evil's wiles. And so how much courage does it indeed take to "break up" with someone, sometimes?)

RFor more on the general notion of a "priority problem" in ethics, see Kant's Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone and Rawls' A Theory of Justice.
ACuriously enough, Aquinas at one point debates whether it would be enough for the damned to suffer from fear of being burned forever, without being actually burned forever. He seems to conclude that actual burning is required, although he perhaps vacillates on this issue because he also seems to defend the possibility of eternal torment via intellectual, not just physical, vision.
KHe also says that we have a direct duty to support the happiness of others, and in some sense, at least sometimes, an indirect duty to support our own happiness. Debased fear of God and the moral law is not his ideal, so though Kant claims that the moral law is more sublime than beautiful, we should think either that he is wrong about that, or that the sublime is not always fearsome (perhaps this is awe), or something else along these lines (his subtle thesis is that fearsomeness occasions sublimity, but that sublimity in itself is a sort of aesthetic disclosure of the awesome, or at least awful, infinity of reason in comparison with the imagination, so that faculty-dynamically, fearsome objects are not themselves sublime but the feeling of the sublime is itself the courage that transcends the image of fear, here).
ZOne might differentiate between, "Which combat imagery is appropriate to the narrative of courage?" and, "Is any combat imagery appropriate to that narrative as such?" and so find that I am asking two questions at once, here. However, if one denies that combat imagery is appropriate to the "pure (a priori) story" of courage, one will deny that courage is when some good thing "triumphs over" something evil. In other words, then, though, the appearance of two different questions, here, elides the fact that they can have equivalent answers: saying, "None," to, "Which," is equivalent to saying, "No," to the "second" question.
Comment: Reminds me of the story about WW2 General Norman Cota - "I'll show you how to take a house with Germans in it."
Comment: You may find interesting the incident of the 19th century mystic-saint [Ramakrishna](https://www.integralworld.net/lane119.html) when he as a young boy seeing white cranes flying against the black clouds is so overwhelmed by the beauty that he passed out... and into samadhi
Answer: It is, if a philosopher says it is. On the other hand, it isn't if another philosopher says it isn't. By this I mean that there is no "right answer" to that question, especially since Kant himself cannot sit down with us today and define his terms and explain what the heck he meant.
Note for completeness that it is also possible for the two philosophers mentioned above to be the same person.
Comment: Although this is a "grim" answer, I appreciate it. I suppose my question is whether things that various commentators (philosophically minded as they may be) have said about courage, when summed up and subjected to deductive reasoning, would have as an implication that when we try to situate courage and the sublime, we find this imagery of some sort of victory in play. But I also have in mind the aporia from the *Laches*, or a curiosity for an idea implicit in Rawls AToJ, where we try to find principles of other virtues besides justice, e.g. courage.


Why does SQL Server 2008 crashed on simple SQL queries?

Question: I'm a developer and running a SQL Server 2008 SP1 instance (default instance) on my local machine (Windows 7 RC 32-Bit).
Sometimes when the program I'm developing sends a query to the SQL Server, the whole SQL Server crashes. The SQL queries are not complex, just simple CRUD queries. When I restart the server, the next query kills him again.
The event log entry states that an error happens because of MS DTC. Unfortunately I don't have any idea why. When I'm using the SQL Server for other purposes through SQL Server Management Studio, I haven't encountered any problems, so I don't think it has to do with my operation system.
Does anybody have ideas why SQL Server crashes? It makes development really difficult, sometimes even impossible.
Best Regards,
Oliver Hanappi
PS: Here is the event log entry.

An MS DTC component has generated an exception. Error Specifics: The process '"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Binn\sqlservr.exe" -sMSSQLSERVER' hit an exception in a MSDTC related component.
  The following exception (0xc0000005) was generated at 0x        00FEAC8C, Pid:7400.
  The process is being terminated.
  Additional information useful in a debugger:
  You can do '.exr 0x0369E930' to display the exception record.
  You can do '.cxr 0x0369E94C' to display the context at the time of the exception.
0
Answer: You must be running distributed transactions from your software to the database.  Do you need to run explicit distributed transactions?
DTC is a part of the OS, not the SQL Server.  You are probably running against a bug in MSDTC which is in the RC version of Windows 7.
If you don't need explicit distributed transactions then disable the use of transactions within your code.  If you do need to use the explicit distributed transactions then try running your code on a release version of the OS, instead of a pre-release OS.
Answer: RC = release candidate = NOT PRODUCTION READY
I would not use Windows 7 until other people have bled the way and figured out all the issues...
Comment: If possible, get the RTM versions via MSDN if it's so important...


Are tar.gz and tgz the same thing?

Question: I created .tgz file with tar czvf file command.then I ended up with a tgz file. I want to know the difference between it and tar.gz.
Comment: Well you could simply try un-gz-ing it. If the result is a working tar file, then there's no difference.
Answer: I think in the old package repo days, .tgz was used because files on DOS floppies could only have three letter extensions. When this limitation was removed, .tar.gz was used to be more verbose by showing both the archive type (tar) and zipper (gzip).
They are identical.
Answer: There's no difference at all. .tgz is simply shorthand for .tar.gz.
Answer: One difference is that browsers seem to have trouble with .tar.gz sometimes, for example, when downloading such a file that already exists locally, it can happen, that they rename it to .tar-1.gz, which will then create problems with certain archivers, mostly on Windows and other environments that use filename ending for file type designation.
This doesn't happen with .tgz ending.
Comment: One additional annoyance with tar.gz is that some decompression apps do not automatically unpack the archive and first create an intermediary x.tar file from x.tar.gz and make you unpack x.tar to get what you need. (Of course if what you need is the archive file itself then this is a perk.)
Comment: this is a typical file renaming to avoid overwriting, it adds (-1) before the last dot (.) because typically what comes after the last dot is the file extension.
Comment: @MMSs Thanks, your comment inspired me to clarify that the problem occurs mostly in environments that use filename endings to designate file type.
Answer: You can unzip tar.gz or .tgz  with:
tar -xzvf

and create with:
tar -czvf

It is absolutely the same
Answer: Short answer: there is no difference.
Long answer:

SunOS USTAR tar format: tar doesn't support inline compression from options (you can install gtar to have GNU version).
Linux POSIX tar (GNU) format: tar can archive and compress as well.

Generally speaking: the extension name will differ depending on how you create your outcome file:
# Archiving THEN compressing: from SunOS or Linux:
$ tar cf output.tar /path/to/archvieme/
$ gzip output.tar
# creates "output.tar.gz" file.

# Archiving AND compressing: people usually save on typing and go with .tgz rather than .tar.gz:
# works only with GNU tar:
$ tar czf output.tgz /path/to/archiveme/

# works on SunOS and Linux:
$ tar cf - /path/to/archiveme/ |gzip > output.tgz

Are tar.gz and tgz the same thing?


Angle chasing, parallelogram, cyclic quadrilateral

Question: In parallelogram  $ ABCD $ with $ \angle BAD > 90^{\circ},$ show that the circle passing through the projections of $C$ onto $ AB,BD$ and $DA$, respectively, passes through the center of the parallelogram.
Answer: Let $P$, $Q$ and $R$ be  projections of $C$ on $AD$, $AB$ and $BD$  respectively.
Also, let $S$ be a center of $ABCD$.
Thus, $S$ is a center of circumcircle of $PAQC.$
Thus,
$$\measuredangle PSQ=360^{\circ}-2\measuredangle PAQ=360^{\circ}-2\left(180^{\circ}-\measuredangle ADC\right)=2\measuredangle ADC.$$
In another hand, since $PAQC$ and $RQBC$ are cyclics, we obtain:
$$\measuredangle PQR=\measuredangle PQC-\measuredangle RQC=\measuredangle PAC-\measuredangle RBC=\measuredangle DAC-\measuredangle DBC.$$
Also, since $PAQC$ and $DPRC$ are cyclics, we obtain:
$$\measuredangle QPR=\measuredangle QPC-\measuredangle RPC=\measuredangle QAC-\measuredangle RDC=\measuredangle BAC-\measuredangle BDC.$$
Thus, $$\measuredangle PRQ=180^{\circ}-\measuredangle PQR-\measuredangle QPR=180^{\circ}-\measuredangle DAC+\measuredangle DBC-\measuredangle BAC+\measuredangle BDC=$$
$$=180^{\circ}-\measuredangle DAB+180^{\circ}-\measuredangle DAB=2\measuredangle ADC,$$
which says that $$\measuredangle PSQ=\measuredangle PRQ$$ and we are done!
Answer: Since $$ \angle DCP = 90^{\circ}-\angle PDC = 90^{\circ}-\angle QBC = \angle QCB =: x$$
so we have $$\angle  DRP = x \;\;\;{\rm and} \;\;\; \angle QRB = x$$
since $CRPD$ and $BCRQ$ are both cyclic. So $$  \angle PQR = 180^{\circ}-2x$$
On the other hand $AQCR$ is also cyclic with center at $S$ so $$\angle PSQ = 2\angle PCQ = 2(90^{\circ}-x)$$ and thus $PQRS$ is cyclic.


How can I merge two terminal windows in OS X lion?

Question: I accidentally split a tabbed terminal up into two windows and I can't figure out how to join it again. Google tells me that I should drag it until it gets translucent on some other version of OS X but that doesn't seem to be working.
Answer: You have to select View » Show Tab Bar if it's not shown (possible if your window has only a single tab).

Then drag all tab headers (just below the window title bar) straight up or down — not sideways — to initiate a drag of a tab across window bounds. Now you get the translucent "drag visual".

Drag this to the other window, and the dragged tab will attach.

Alternatively, you can always select Window » Merge All Windows from the menu.
Answer: Go to Terminal --> Windows -->"Merge All Windows"
Comment: "All" != "two"...
Comment: add inline pics by copying to clipboard then paste in any blank part of post window.
Answer: It is possible to merge Terminal windows by using the top-level menu. Select Window → Merge All Windows.
Another way to achieve this without using the mouse is by adding a custom keyboard shortcut in System Preferences:

Open System Preferences, Keyboard, Shortcuts tab (Screenshot)
Select App Shortcuts and press the + button
For the Application, choose Terminal.app from the list
For the Menu Title, type this text exactly: Merge All Windows
Choose whatever Keyboard Shortcut you want and press Add

Pro Tip: Start by selecting the Terminal window you want the others to merge into, then use the Merge All Windows function.
Comment: This is only correct if you have exactly two terminal windows open. In every other case "two" is different to "all".


Which communities wear tefilin while davening Minha?

Question: Which communities wear tefilin while davening Minha on ordinary weekdays? I was told by my Rav that some do.
Comment: I once heard that some Sepharadim do.
Comment: Thanks. Which ones ?
Comment: I'm unsure. I heard it from a piece written by R' Hamburger which was bringing a source for 9 Av at minchah.
Comment: @maaaan. The following link explains that there are several types of tefilin containing different passages (or order of passages.) Rashi version has become standard. Kabbalistic believe that one should daven Shacharit in Rashi and Shimusha Raba during mincha. So perhaps the answer is, Kabbalistic (or those who tend to that belief) wear tefillin twice. The link also gives other possibilities including the fact that we are suppose to wear tefillin all day and that if it was an isolated incident, the person may have not yet have said Shacharit.   http://ohr.edu/3943
Comment: Thanks for this excellent answer! Do you understand this part of the link : "Since tefillin worn backward does not disqualify the mitzvah (O.Ch.,M.B. 27:12), wearing Rashi or R.T. is like reversing Shimusha Raba or Ra'avad tefillin respectively. In this way, each pair of either Rashi or R.T. worn the right way simultaneously fulfills the corresponding opinion in the de facto, reversed way. Thus, all four opinions can be fulfilled with only two pair." If wearing tefilin backward does not fulfill the mitswa, how can the 4 opinions be fulfilled with only two pairs?
Comment: @maaaan. I am a bit lost myself! This is how I understand it. If the sequence of passages in front and left to right is 1, 2, 3 and 4, the back would be 4, 3, 2 and 1. If wearing tefillin backwards still fulfills the mitzvah, then you can argue and say you have fulfilled 1, 2, 3, and 4 as well as 4, 3, 2, and 1. The second pair of tefillin would fulfill the other two opinions since 1, 2, 4, 3 reversed would be 3, 4, 2 , 1. So it appears that two sets of tefillin fulfills four opinions. Not to make this more complicated maaaan, but I wonder if everyone agrees wearing tefillin backwards is okay.
Answer: Technically the Zilberman community in the old city do, but they wear them all day anyway
Answer: The Teshuvos VeHanhagos mentions a few:

Some communities in Israel (now and during the time of the Reishis Chochma)
R' Velvel Brisker
The Rama MiPano
Comment: 2 & 3 are not communities. 1 needs a source. +1 anyway.
Comment: @mevaqesh better?
Comment: It could be further improved with the identities of the these communities and some reference to their practice. Even if the source is personal observation, noting this would improve the question. Regarding the Reishis Chochmah, is this something that he writes? If so, where?
Answer:
Regarding your seeing people wearing tefillin during mincha, there are several possible explanations:
1] They may have missed shacharit or wearing Rashi tefillin for whatever reason, so they endeavor to fulfill that day's mitzvah of tefillin at least during the mincha prayer rather than at some other time of the day.
2] Since technically speaking the mitzvah of tefillin is to wear them all day long, even though this is not done, some choose to wear Rashi tefillin at least during mincha in addition to shacharit.
3] According to the kabbalists, in addition to using Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam tefillin in shacharit, one should use Shimusha Raba tefillin in mincha.

Source: ohr.edu/3943
Comment: How does this answer the question?
Comment: I agree that only the 3) answer the question. But the 1° and 2° also help understand why some people where tefilin while davening mincha.
Comment: How does 3 answer anything? Is there a community that follows this position? I can find lots of sources that suggest one should. The question was which communities __do__ do it
Comment: If they should do it, there is a good chance some do do it. And "doing it" is not only about the "facts" it is also regarding the law: Kabbalist do wear the tefilin while davening mincha, at least according to Kabbala...
Comment: Ok but who are they? The Shulchan Arukh also recommends wearing Tefillin during Mincha. But who follows that?
Comment: That I don't know. For now we only know it is "the kabbalists". Also, what is the source for the Shulchan Aruch please.
Comment: http://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/18780/if-you-didn-t-put-on-tefilin-at-shacharis-when-should-you?rq=1#comment45971_18780


Resizing window with text scaling

Question: I often have multiple windows in emacs.  I would like to have a function that modifies the width of a window to a certain value, then scales the text such that the longest line in the buffer fits the window leaving a small margin at the end (e.g. of two or three characters)
Answer: Commands text-scale-decrease, text-scale-increase, and
text-scale-adjust (bound to C-x C--, C-x C-+, C-x C-=, and
C-x C-0) let you resize the text in the current buffer by
changing its scale factor.  When you shrink or enlarge the
apparent text size this way, however, the window takes no notice
of it.  In particular, although shrinking text can result in extra
horizontal space at the right, window commands do not see this
space as extra.
If you use library face-remap+.el then you can do what you want, or at least something similar, which you can modify.
User option text-scale-resize-window lets you
automatically resize the selected window (horizontally,
vertically, or both) when text is resized, so that the way the
window fits the buffer text remains relatively constant.
Shrinking the text in one window shrinks that window, giving more
space to adjacent windows.
If you also use library fit-frame.el, then one-window frames
also respond to text resizing by scaling.  If not, then the
text-scale commands have no effect on frame size for one-window
frames. (See also Shrink-Wrapping Frames.)
Comment: Sometimes, when I scale down, I see that the next line continuation marker gets displayed in the fringe.
Comment: I also see that you have redefined the scaling commands.  I am critical of such design, because the normal functionality has its use.
Comment: The vanilla behavior is available with option `text-scale-resize-window` = `nil`.
Comment: Good. Have found a slight problem because `(require 'face-remap+)` seems to enable the resize feature.  But most functionality, does not take effect simply by requiring a feature.
Comment: Could you fix the situation where the resizing ends up continuing on next line, even when at first there is some space between the longest line and the window edge?
Comment: Using the library is optional. Setting the option to nil, as I said, gives you vanilla behavior.
Comment: Have you noticed the line continuation effect?

Resizing window with text scaling


How far away can dropped or disarmed weapons be kicked?

Question: When you interact with an object, kicking away a dropped or disarmed weapon should be an obvious choice, landing somewhere between 'pick up a dropped axe' and 'kick a small stone,' however, there are no rules indicating how far one can kick an object.  This can be fairly important.  The difference between kicking a sword five feet and fifteen feet away is very significant.  How is the distance any item can be kicked adjudicated?
Answer: Effectiveness of such an action should be resolved by an Ability Check.
While you are right that kicking a small object is a Free Action in combat, that doesn't mean you always succeed automatically. Sure, simple, trained actions like drawing a sword are not rolled for, but if you want to achieve a specific advantage with such action, you have plenty of interesting skills to choose from.
Most obvious would be to use a Strength check (Athletics) or Dexterity check (Acrobatics?), depending on your players description of the action. You could then place appropriate modifiers reflecting the terrain (mud, wooden floor, grass?), difficulty (Sword of Spiky Mistakes or Club of Harmlessness?) and other factors. Then, depending on whether the outcome is high medium or low you can adjudicate an appropriate distance.
Don't overthink this
Of course, the rules say little about such situations, but how many times do you imagine your players will kick something in combat? Stick to well-known simple systems and invent house-rules only if they don't work. It's more important to give a quick ruling and move on rather than ponder on what would be an accurate simulation. Treat it like a "miscellaneous" situation it is and go forth with the adventure. If your players complain, talk about the matter between sessions and decide on some rules that work for everyone.
Comment: And remember that in the end, all you want to know is "Is the weapon kicked further than the distance the creature can cover back and forth in one turn to pick it up?" I wouldn't bother thinking beyond.
Comment: I was thinking "Is the object kicked far enough to provoke an opportunity attack, to go pick it up?"
Answer: Other than the interaction of "kicking a small stone" in the free interactions section, the system is fairly quiet about the distances of kicking objects.
In keeping with the simplicity mandate of the rules, a good rule of thumb would be half the throwing distance of a thrown similar object, which is usually 20/60. So if someone wanted to kick away a weapon, 10 feet would be a reasonable distance for a heavy weapon, and 30 feet for a light one. You could halve the distance again for difficult terrain. In no case should the kicking distance exceed the throwing distance for a similar object, unless the object is designed to be kicked (such as a football).
This really falls into the realm of a DM call, though, since the rulebook does not dwell on too many fringe cases.
Comment: I think it's be useful to stress that the 20/60 might be best used to place an *upper bound* on the proposed action. Certainly we shouldn't be able to kick the dagger skittering across the ground farther than we can wind up and throw it....
Comment: Any experience using this rule?
Comment: @keithcurtis I guess my point was that your rule of thumb--kick=1/2*throw--might be contested, is subject to Bromanov's criticism of 'no experience in use', &c. I think there's a slightly different, first-principles argument that 60' be a limit for a throw could simply inform one's ruling. In other words, "no matter what you think of my 10' or 30' or halving in terrain, it certainly shouldn't be *more than 60'*." Something like that strikes me as a solid foundation, then work toward your recommended implementation. (But that's just how this one stranger would have structured it.)
Comment: Oh, so sorry. I've seen your name around here so much, and have apparently mis-read it every time!
Comment: @PremierBromanov I think I understand what you're getting at and have edited accordingly. Feel free to suggest an alternate or clearer phrasing.
Comment: @PremierBromanov - No. Just how I would handle it, extrapolating from the current rules. I don't think any given answer is a game breaker, and it would come up so infrequently that I don't think much more detail is needed.
Comment: @nitsua60 - I have already halved the distance for a kick. Should I re-word the answer for clarity, or am I missing something?
Comment: @nitsua60 I appreciate the porno nickname, but my name is actually Bromanov, not Bonanov lol
Answer: This situation is not covered explicitly by the rules, but comes up quite often in one of the games I run due to a fighter with the Disarming Strike maneuver. I use a "degrees of success" roll using Strength (athletics). See the DMG for a description of this type of roll.
I set the DC as 5 + distance kicked. Since things like reach are measured in 5 ft increments and I often play using a grid, I also use increments of 5 on the distances, so the distance kicked is rounded down.
This results in a DC of 10 to kick a weapon out of an opponent's square into an adjacent one, or if not using a grid, out from under the opponent's feet, but still within reach, assuming a typical, medium sized creature. Rolling 15 or higher would result in the weapon being out of the opponent's reach or two squares. A roll of 25 would move it 20 ft or 4 squares.
In the end, a roll of at least 15 is needed to require the opponent to do more than just reach out and pick up their weapon using their object interaction, forcing them to choose between risking an opportunity attack or continuing to fight without that weapon. At low levels, this allows a PC with proficiency in athletics to successfully hamper their opponent about 1/2 the time, with the success rate rising as they gain levels. This makes disarming strike on par with other maneuvers.
For those without proficiency or high strength, the success rate is going to be closer to 1/4. However, kicking the weapon 5 feet does allow an ally to pick up the weapon from 10 ft away from the opponent, which said non-proficient PC should be able to successfully complete about 1/2 of the time.
At my table, this method has been a success. It is very simple, easy to remember, and allows the player to succeed often enough to want to attempt this, while failing often enough that they feel tension when they roll.
Answer: There's too many variables to make a simple rule. A long sword will move much further on the polished marble floor of the throne room that it will when kicked with the same force in a muddy forest clearing.
So it falls under rule 0 - the DM makes the rules.
Comment: and rule 1 is what?
Comment: I was more or less trying to nudge you to add it to your answer
Comment: I meant rule 0. I'll go edit that.
Comment: And rule 0 is what?
Comment: http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/22715/is-there-a-limit-to-rule-0
Answer: Use the rules for throwing an object.  The goal is the same (using a limb to cause an object to traverse a distance), there is no reason for the mechanic to be different.
Comment: This answer would be improved by showing how to apply this idea, practically. For example, does this mean that kicking a sword always places it exactly 60' away, or does it go 20'? What is the player rolling to determine success/failure—an attack roll (vs. what AC?) or an ability check (vs. what DC?) or no roll at all? Does the PC get to target a specific location—and if they miss, where does it go (or does it stay in place)?  Etc., etc. Sharing your experience using this solution, and how it solves the details the question is asking for help with, would help others use it successfully.
Comment: I can think of plenty. For one, try throwing a fire poker as far as you can. Now try kicking it as far as you can
Comment: I've actually done it with a sword.  It goes farther with the kick than the throw (by a good 5 feet or more), you just have to get your toes under it.
Comment: That will have to go under anecdotal evidence. I too have kicked and thrown swords (8 years of stage fencing, where kicking a sword is something that actually happens). I have found the reverse to be true, and I'm a lousy throw. :)
Comment: Every last one of those questions is best answered by looking at the rules for throwing objects.  Seriously, though, in nearly 30 *years* of running games, there has never been a problem using the rules for throwing an object somewhere, regardless of system, to handle the scenario of kicking an object somewhere.
Comment: That statement remains true even when the system in question breaks the skills down separately, the mechanics were the same, just the skill used was different, and that system also involved skills like 'shoving sharp pointy things into soft things that scream and bleed'.
Answer: This is a complex situation and the results would depend on

the weapon itself: weight and configuration. Think flail versus club
terrain: grass, mud, stone
orientation of the weapon: sword pointing right at you versus 90° and anything in between (random chance)
the battle: is the opponent focused on you or are others fighting it/him/her? Certainly might open the character to a free hit when he/she decides to play kick ball in the middle of a battle.

If you really wanted to explore this, I would probably make up a table with weapon types versus distance with modifications for items 2  and 3 (and 4 if you're rushing).
Thinking this through, let's say,

Final Distance = distance from table divided by four sided die roll (rolled by player) times orientation (0 to 90° rolled by GM)/90 * terrain factor

No, I have not tested this system as I've never had a player try to kick a weapon.
Comment: Reasons for downvotes are appreciated. perhaps the formula is too specific?


Simultaneous measurement of multiple observables

Question: Commutation relations tell us which observables are compatible and which ones are not. How is that extended to more than two observables being measured at the same time (or successively)? If $\hat A$, $\hat B$, and $\hat C$ are hermitian operators corresponding to physical observables such that $[\hat A,\hat B]=0$ and $[\hat A,\hat C]=0$ (an optional restriction), is there any commutation relation that tells us about the compatibility of these observables?
More briefly, how does the uncertainty principle extend beyond just 2 observables? Is it even possible to extend it to more than two observables? It doesn't seem unreasonable to want to measure more than two observables simultaneously.
Answer: You can check the commutations of every possible pair of observables in an arbitrarily long list, only if all pairs have $0$ commutator can you know the entire set of observables precisely.
For instance, in terms of angular momentum, you can know $L^2$ and one of: $L_x$, $L_y$ and $L_z$ precisely, in principal.
Is this what you mean?
Comment: I believe the only way is checking each pair, yes. Any formulation would just boil down to that.
There's actually a deeper reason as to why these occur in pairs - if you're interested reading some Hamiltonian Mechanics -> Classical Field Theory -> Quantum field theory would give you some insight.
Comment: It's half of what I mean. Given that the operators don't all commute with each other, how is that expressed in the form of an uncertainty relation? Put another way, is there a version of the generalized uncertainty principle for more than two observables? Or is checking every possible pair the only way to carry out suchh a process?


How Specify Application Pool and Identity When Creating Central Admin

Question: I notice when executing the cmdlet New-SPCentralAdministration I am not able to specify the app pool name or its identity.  What happens is the the cmdlet creates a new application pool with the undesirable guid name.  Furthermore the Identity of the app pool is set to the farm administrator account.   It appears the New-SPCentralAdministration cmdlet needs some enhancements to accommodate those types of configurations so what powershell commands or approaches should be taken to handle them?
Answer: There are very good reasons why you cannot control how the app pool for the CA site is created. Don't even try to mess with this. Your CA site MUST run as the Farm Account - this is non-negotiable.
Answer: Regarding the app pool name, my central admin app pool is called:
SharePoint Central Administration v4
which is defined by the constant
Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPConstants.AdminSiteName

The calls for creating a central admin site eventually get to this method
SPAdministrationWebApplication.CreateDefaultInstance(SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase,
        SPWebService adminService, IdentityType identityType,
        string farmUser, SecureString farmPassword)

So i don't think there is anyway to change that. Are you sure the GUID named app pool on is for central admin? It may have been assign by someone playing in IIS?
And then regarding the identity of central admin app pool, by looking at the code, i would say that it should stay as the sharepoint farm account. If you look at the page for configuring the service accounts, the central admin app pool is not one of them, but the farm account is
http://xyz:8080/_admin/FarmCredentialManagement.aspx
When you install sharepoint you should have at least two accounts,

farm account
This is the account central admin and the timer will run under
You should never log in with this account
farm admin account
you should log onto the sharepoint server with this account
and you should never add this account to any of the service/managed accounts

New-SPCentralAdministration uses the farm account to provision central admin.
You say

Furthermore the Identity of the app pool is set to the farm administrator account

I think you have got your accounts mixed up or you are only using one account to do two jobs.


How can I track which links are clicked on which pages in Google Analytics?

Question: Consider a website with these three pages:

Each page contains some Amazon links. Some of the Amazon links appear on multiple pages, while others appear on only a single page.
How can I set up Google Tag Manager and/or Google Analytics in such a way that I can see how often each link was clicked on a per-page basis?
My end goal is to be able to compile a report in this format:
example.com/shirts:
    Amazon links were clicked a total of 167 times
    amazon.com/red-shirt was clicked 63 times
    amazon.com/blue-shirt was clicked 92 times
    amazon.com/fabric-cleaner was clicked 12 times

example.com/pants:
    Amazon links were clicked a total of 101 times
    amazon.com/black-pants was clicked 51 times
    amazon.com/gray-pants was clicked 39 times
    amazon.com/fabric-cleaner was clicked 11 times

example.com/socks:
    Amazon links were clicked a total of 111 times
    amazon.com/tube-socks was clicked 38 times
    amazon.com/crew-socks was clicked 39 times
    amazon.com/fabric-cleaner was clicked 34 times

And also a report in this format:
amazon.com/red-shirt:
    63 total clicks
    63 clicks on example.com/shirts

amazon.com/blue-shirt:
    92 total clicks
    92 clicks on example.com/shirts

amazon.com/black-pants:
    51 total clicks
    51 clicks on example.com/shirts

amazon.com/gray-pants:
    39 total clicks
    39 clicks on example.com/shirts

amazon.com/tube-socks:
    38 total clicks
    38 clicks on example.com/shirts

amazon.com/crew-socks:
    39 total clicks
    39 clicks on example.com/shirts

amazon.com/fabric-cleaner
    57 total clicks
    12 clicks on example.com/shirts
    11 clicks on example.com/pants
    34 clicks on example.com/socks

I've set up some Variables and Events to the point where I can see how many total Amazon links are being clicked on my site and how many clicks happen on each page, but I can't figure out how to break them down by link.
Comment: I would use Google Data Studio to create the reports. It will give you more flexibility and options than GA, with how you want to break it down and display the data
Answer: There's a few options for this.
You can write a custom JavaScript function that sends this data to Google Analytics as event data. You can capture the ID or URL of the link and send that as an event value.
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/sending-hits
You can also do the same thing through Google Tag Manager.
https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/6106716?hl=en
A third-party tracking application can track which links are clicked where. For example, HotJar will track any click on any page and produce a heatmap for you showing which links people click. If you have more than a couple of pages with a couple of links, this is probably the most useful option. There's quite a few different applications which do similar things, you'll often get a free option which will track the first few hundred users and then have an option to pay for more data.
Here's a list of similar services, you can find one that suits.
https://www.g2.com/products/hotjar/competitors/alternatives