Regarding the pronunciation of "address"

Question: pronunciation of address
I'm a post-80s. I had been keeping pronouncing it /əˈd'drɛs/ for many years until recently. Now I know its pronunciation in verb form /əˈdrɛs/ and noun form /ædrɛs/.
I thought what had made me misread it was becase our teacher misread it.
But today, my older leader (a Chinese) also read it as /əˈd'drɛs/. This pronunciation is more a 'd' in there. It didn't look like both our teachers misread it. I wonder where did the 'a d dress' pronunciation come from.
Answer: As a native British English speaker I can tell you that both the noun and verb are pronounced exactly the same. Listen to the audio pronunciation on this dictionary site. I was aware that US English speakers pronounce the noun differently, but going off the US English pronunciations on the same site, it would seem that Americans pronounce both the noun and the verb the same as well.

British English speakers pronounce it to sound like "a dress"
US English speakers pronounce it to sound like "add ress"

Perhaps your confusion comes not from hearing the noun and verb pronounced differently, but hearing them in different accents or dialects?
In both countries, there are also varying *regional dialects. The vowel sound at the start of "address" may sound like "uh" or "eh" in some British regional accents.
Comment: AmE speakers are divided in respect to the noun.  uh-DRESS and AD-dress.   If the verb refers to writing a street address on an envelope, it can have either pronunciation. But if it means to tackle or confront a problem, the verb is pronounced uh-DRESS. *We have to uh-DRESS the problem of global warming*.
Answer: The confusion comes from the use of the word being used as a noun (address) and as a verb (to address). The noun address, which is the location of a residence, is pronounced with the emphasis on the 'a'dress - sounds like the a in actor "a-dress." Ex. My address is 10 Fillmore Street"
The verb "to address," as an envelope or address an audience, bears the accent or stress on the last syllable - uh-dress. If it were to be written with accent marks as in Spanish, the noun "address" would be written as áddress and the verb "to address" as addréss. Ex. The post office needs to address the issue of writing the address on an envelope using cursive writing.
Comment: Not true  The verb and noun are pronounced exactly the same way
Comment: You're both wrong and both right, because you are not limiting your statements geographically. See Astralbee's answer


Poweredge 750 cannot startup after power failure

Question: After a recent power failure my poweredge 750 powers on but just sits on the Dell A06 bios loading screen.  I tried resetting the bios' memory by removing the battery and restarting after 15min to no avail.  Is there any approach to take to try to recover from this "stuck" state?
Answer:
Is there any approach to take to try to recover from this "stuck" state?

Yeah, it's called troubleshooting.
Start by removing hardware one piece at a time until you identify the culprit. Try each DIMM individually, one PSU at a time if you have redundant ones, disconnect the HDD backplane, remove the RAID controller, etc.
Hopefully, removing one of these things will cause the server to boot and you'll know what went bad. If not, it could be a damaged motherboard or CPU.


Nonatomic probability measures

Question: It is known that for a compact metric space $X$ without isolated points the set of nonatomic Borel probability measures on $X$ is dense in the set of all Borel probability measures on $X$ (endowed with the Prokhorov metric). In particular if $X$ is a product space $X=X_1\times\cdots\times X_n$ (each $X_i$ a compact metric space), and given a measure $\mu$ on $(X,\mathcal B(X))$ ($\mathcal B(X)$ the Borel subsets of $X$), there is a nonatomic $\nu$ measure on $(X,\mathcal B(X))$ arbitrarily close to $\mu$. In general, $\nu$ need not have nonatomic marginal probability measures (here the marginal for the $i$-th factor is $\nu(X_1\times\cdots\times X_{i-1}\times\cdot\times X_{i+1}\times\cdots\times X_n)$). Is it known whether a there exists a $\nu$ with nonatomic marginals arbitrarily close to $\mu$?
Comment: Without loss of generality, each of your $X_i$ can be taken to be the Hilbert cube $[0,1]^\omega$, in which case $X = [0,1]^\omega$ also, so it would be sufficient to show the following: every probability measure on the Hilbert cube can be approximated by measures with nonatomic marginals.  That should be easier because the Hilbert cube has nice structure.  In particular, it might follow from the statement for the finite-dimensional cube $[0,1]^n$ and the Kolmogorov extension theorem.
Answer: I think that Dave's argument (as well as the reference to the Hilbert cube) make this question more complicated than it actually is.
Let's take for a starting point the claim already formulated by the topicstarter: for a compact metric space $X$ without isolated points the set of non-atomic Borel probability measures on X is weak$^*$ dense in the set of all Borel probability measures on $X$. In particular, any delta-measure on $X$ can be approximated by non-atomic measures. It implies that in the case of a product space $X=X_1\times\dots\times X_n$ any delta-measure on $X$ can be approximated by products of non-atomic measures (so that, in particular, all their marginals are non-atomic). Now, in turn, an arbitrary measure on $X$ can be approximated by finite convex combinations of delta-measures on $X$.
Answer: I believe the answer is yes. Although it was not specifically stated in the question, let us assume that each $X_i$ has no isolated points.
Since $\mu$ has only finitely many marginals, and each marginal has only countably many atoms, we may write $\mu = \sum_i a_i \, \mu_i$, where, for each $i$, $a_i > 0$, $\mu_i$ is a probability measure, and either

the marginals of $\mu_i$ have no atoms, or
some marginal of $\mu_i$ is a single atom $\delta_x$.

For each $i$, we will show there is a sequence $\{\mu_{i,k}\}$ of good probability measures that converges to $\mu_i$. Then $\nu_k = \sum_i a_i \, \mu_{i,k}$ is also good, for each $k$. Also, we have $\nu_k \to \mu$. (I am not familiar with the Prokhorov metric, but $\{\nu_k\}$ converges to $\mu$ in the weak topology, which I believe gives the same topology on the space of probability measures.)
To complete the proof, we may assume the marginal of $\mu$ on $X_n$ is a single atom $\delta_x$ at some $x \in X_n$. That is, we may write $\mu = \mu' \times \delta_{x}$, where $\mu'$ is a probability measure on $X_1 \times \cdots \times X_{n-1}$. By induction on $n$, we may approximate $\mu'$ by a probability measure $\nu'$, whose marginals have no atoms. Also, we may approximate $\delta_x$ by an atomless probability measure $\nu''$ on $X_n$. Then $\nu' \times \nu''$ approximates $\mu$, and its marginals have no atoms.
Some additional details of the proof can be found below.

Write the atomic part of the $X_1$-marginal of $\mu$ as $\sum_j a_j \delta_{x_j}$, where the $x_j$'s are distinct and $a_j \ge 0$. For each $j$, let
$$\nu_j'(E) = \mu \Bigl( E \cap \bigl( \{x_j\} \times X_2 \times \cdots X_n \bigr) \Bigr),$$
and write $\nu_j' = a_j \nu_j$, where $\nu_j$ is a probability measure. Then we have $\mu = \mu^{(1)} + \sum_j a_j \nu_j$, where the $X_1$-marginal of $\mu^{(1)}$ has no atoms, and the $X_1$-marginal of $\nu_j$ is $\delta_{x_j}$ (or $a_j = 0$).
Applying a similar argument, we may write $\mu^{(1)} = \mu^{(2)} + \sum_j b_j \nu^2_j$, where both the $X_1$ and $X_2$-marginals of $\mu^{(2)}$ are atomless, and the $X_2$-marginal of $\nu^2_j$ is an atom (or $b_j = 0$). Continuing in this way, we write
$$ \mu = \mu^{(n)} + \sum_{i=1}^n \sum_j a_{i,j} \mu_{i,j} ,$$
where all marginals of $\mu^{(n)}$ are atomless, and, for all $i$ and $j$, the $X_i$-marginal of $\mu_{i,j}$ is an atom (or $a_{i,j} = 0$). Deleting the terms with $a_{i,j} = 0$ yields the desired decomposition of $\mu$.

We have $\nu_k = \sum_i a_i \mu_{i,k}$. Given a continuous function $f \colon X \to \mathbb{R}$ and $\epsilon > 0$, assume, for simplicity, that $\|f\|_\infty \le 1$. Since $\sum_i a_{i,k} = 1$, there is some $M$, such that $\sum_{i > M} a_{i,k} < \epsilon$. Then, since $\mu_{i,k} \to \mu_i$, we have
$\left| \int_X f \, d\mu - \int_X f \, d\nu_k \right|$
$\le \left| \int_X f \, d\mu - \sum_{i=1}^M a_i \int_X f \, d\mu_{i,k} \right| + \epsilon$
$\to \left| \int_X f \, d\mu - \sum_{i=1}^M a_i \int_X f \, d\mu_{i} \right| + \epsilon$
$\le \left| \int_X f \, d\mu - \sum_{i=1}^\infty a_i \int_X f \, d\mu_{i} \right| + 2\epsilon$
$= 0 + 2\epsilon $.
So $\nu_k \to \mu$ weakly.

Suppose $\nu'_i \to \mu'$ on $X_1 \times \cdots \times X_{n-1}$ and $\nu''_i \to \delta_x$ on $X_n$. Let $f$ be a continuous function on $X_1 \times \cdots \times X_{n-1}$ and let $g$ be a continuous function on $X_n$. Then
$$\int_X (f \times g) \, d(\nu'_i \times \nu''_i)
= \nu'_i(f) \cdot \nu''_i(g)
\to \mu'(f) \cdot \delta_x(g) .$$
Since functions of the form $f \times g$ span a dense subspace of the continuous functions on $X$, this implies $\nu'_i \times \nu''_i \to \mu' \times \delta_x$.

Nonatomic probability measures


USB enclosure that will work with a Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB SATAII 64MB Cache Hard Drive?

Question: Wondering if there is a case that I can hook up one Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB SATAII 64MB Cache
Hard Drive and use it as it is external USB hard drive?
Answer: Yes.  Any SATA/USB enclosure should be just as capable of handling this hard drive as it is any other, provided the interfaces and physical size specifications are compatible.


Change username without root access?

Question: I've learned to ssh for the first time, and am logged into my university mainframe account. Can I change my username without root? Or is it like a password where I need root?
Answer: Your username is determined by the system administrator when the account is created.  You pretty much need root level privileges to change it.
Your password is not fixed and can be changed with the passwd command.  You need to know the old password to change it, and the system may have restrictions (e.g. can not change more than once a day).
Answer: Yes, you need root access to change your username if the system uses passwd files for authentication. However, most likely the access at your site is controlled by means of LDAP or YP or other centralized account management services
You need not root access to change your password as soon as you know your password and passwd utility is available to you.
Comment: being able to change your password with `passwd` assumes that it isn't a poorly configured LDAP setup (you can configure LDAP without giving users write permissions to their own passwords). Normally a reasonable assumption, but not a guarantee. The admin could also disable `passwd` but that's a bit more deliberate and counterproductive.

Change username without root access?


What does it mean when dough is referred to as "short"?

Question: I saw this term pop up in a quiche recipe concerning the crust - How can you tell if the problem is too little/too much shortening, or too little/too much liquid? If it's out of proportion, can it be "fixed" without creating an inedible cardboard thing?
Comment: From the [online etymology dictionary on shortening](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=shortening) (wish I could block quote in comments) "'butter or other fat used in baking,' 1796, from shorten 'make crumbly' (1733), from short in the secondary sense of 'easily crumbled' (early 15c.), which perhaps arose via the notion of 'having short fibers.' This is also the sense behind shortbread (1801) and shortcake (1590s)."
Comment: @Jefromi That could be an answer, not a comment. Either way it was helpful.
Answer: "Shortness" in dough refers to its tenderness, which is influenced by the amount of fat as well as sugar. If your quiche recipe calls for a short dough, it would be referring to a higher ratio of fat to flour since pastry for quiche typically doesn't include sugar.
Both fat and sugar minimize and break down gluten development which results in "short" protein strands and thus a more tender result.  As the fat is rubbed into the flour, glutenin (providing strength) and gliadin (providing elasticity) are coated with the fat which acts as a lubricant to keep the two from being able to link together forming gluten when liquid is added to the mix.
The higher the amount of fat in a dough the more tender it will be.  If you want a dough to be flaky then you'd leave the fat in larger particles which will blister to form flakes.  If you want a dough that will be moisture resistant to fillings (such as a quiche) then work that fat in finely so that it will be less likely to absorb moisture during and after baking.
Quiche crusts (and crusts for other custard based pies... pumpkin, sweet potato, custard, etc) should first be blind-baked for the crispest crust in the finished result.
As for "fixing" a pastry dough...it's usually easiest and best to simply start over.  Water is added a little at a time to avoid adding too much.  If too much water is used then more flour needs to be added but with the excessive flour and water then comes additional gluten.  If you get a pastry dough too wet, I would be inclined to rub some additional fat into flour and then add that to the first dough rather than just flour alone.  Too little shortening will really only be noticed after baking and that's going to be determined through how tough or tender the dough is.
Keep in mind that toughness also depends on the amount you've handled it.  Short doughs typically can't be handled too much because the higher amount of fat means that they will warm and get sticky.  It is best to refrigerate to firm up the fat rather than add flour as the flour simply dries it out.  The tender nature of the dough from sugar means that in some cases they can be impossible to roll out and transfer to a pan.  In this case they are usually put into the bottom of the pan and then patted out across the bottom and up the side.
Answer: The Oxford English Dictionary has this to say:

IV. Not tenacious in substance, friable, brittle. [Probably connected
  with branch I through the notion 'having little length of fibre': cf.
  sense A. 3. (= short dung, manure, muck: manure containing short straw
  and in an advanced state of fermentation.) ]

Of edible substances: Friable, easily crumbled.

a. of crust, pastry, etc. Cf. short-bread n., short-cake n., short
  crust n.

c1430   Two Cookery Bks. 52   Þan take warme Berme, & putte al þes
    to-gederys, & bete hem togederys with þin hond tyl it be schort &
    þikke y-now. 1594   Good Huswifes Handmaide 17 b   To make short
    paste in Lent. 1700   W. Congreve Way of World iii. i. 46   You may
    be as short as a Shrewsbury Cake, if you please. 1888   B. Edmondston
    & J. M. E. Saxby Home of Naturalist 99   A thick cake, which may be
    made of either flour or oatmeal, and may be rendered 'short' by the
    use of fat.

b. of fruit, meat, etc. to eat short: to break up or crumble in the
  mouth.

1648   T. Gage Eng.-Amer. 143   This is the Venison of
    America, whereof I have sometimes eaten, and found it white and short.
    1655   T. Moffett & C. Bennet Healths Improvem. xix. 186   Salmons
    are of a fatty, tender, short, and sweet flesh. 1699   J. Evelyn
    Acetaria 57   The bigger Roots..should..eat short and quick. 1706   G. London & H. Wise Retir'd Gard'ner I. i. vii. 35   Its Pulp eats
    short, and its Juice is sugar'd. 1856   Orr's Circle of Sci., Pract.
    Chem. 337   Vinegar makes the meat short, short meat being easy of
    digestion.

[Note: friable means "easily crumbled"]
Answer: If used in an example for a simple pastry, then i think it would be referred to as flakey and melting in the mouth. Pastry's should be 'short' as they have a crumbly texture, flakes in your mouth, and is very soft. Hope this helps!


How to convert a VS 2010 solution back to 2008

Question: We started using VS 2010 and were very happy with it, so we converted our project into a 2010 solution (still .net 3.5) and continued our development in 2010. However, we are getting a lot of bugs recently and want to go back to 2008. The solution files have changed (new projects and files added everywhere), but everything is still in .net 3.5. I was wondering if there is an easy way to migrate back to 2008.
Comment: @Mike Atlas - that would be my first thought too - but the OP states that the solutions have changed with new projects and files.
Answer: Depending on if they kept the solution file structure similar between 2008 and 2010, you just need to create an empty solution file in 2008 and look at the top identifier line in it, and copy it into the other solution file.
I however doubt they kept it the same since they were integrating a number of features into solution files.
You would be better off to create a new blank solution in 2008 and use "Add existing project" to reimport them. As long as you dont have any custom "solution" wide references this will work (no solution folders, server setups, etc).
It is probably the fastest and most direct route.
Comment: Agreed. Create a blank VS08 solution, and add all csproj files into it. Then you are done. The csproj files work fine in both solutions.
Answer: I had success changing the first 2 lines from:
Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00
# Visual Studio 2010

to
Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00
# Visual Studio 2008

Answer: Assuming that your solution is under source control and the migration from VS 2008 to VS 2010 was the only change in that checkin, just compare the two version and see what's changed.
Then change the lines affected back to the VS 2008 version and you should be good to go.
There's no automatic process as Microsoft see this as a one way operation.
Comment: here is an article that mention that lines: http://blogs.msdn.com/rextang/archive/2009/07/06/9819189.aspx. I've written simple tool for this purpose: http://code.google.com/p/vsprojconverter
Answer: You can manually edit .sln file in text editor. There is field named version, or like that, just change it from 10 to 9.
Comment: Yes this is the simplest way.
Answer: This question
How does one convert a Visual Studio .NET 2008 solution to Visual Studio .NET 2005?
might also be applicable for converting from 2010 back to 2008.
Answer: You can use "Project Converter":
http://www.emmet-gray.com/Articles/ProjectConverter.htm
I have just found it. I am going to test it right now! :-)
Comment: dead link 2017/03/23
Answer: Please try the following (find first line and replace to second line to convert 2010 solution to 2008):
TargetFrameworkMoniker = ".NETFramework,Version=v2.0"
TargetFramework = "3.5"

# Visual Studio 10
# Visual Studio 2008

Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 11.00
Microsoft Visual Studio Solution File, Format Version 10.00

<Project ToolsVersion="4.0"
<Project ToolsVersion="3.5"

<ProductVersion>10.0.20506</ProductVersion>
<ProductVersion>9.0.30729</ProductVersion>

\VisualStudio\v10.0\
\VisualStudio\v9.0\

<Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Workflow.Targets" />
<Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Microsoft\Windows Workflow Foundation\v3.5\Workflow.Targets" />

This worked on my solutions, you can try to see if it fit to your cases.
Answer: as maZZoo tells, you have to replace those lines in .sln, but if you check you Output panel you may have an alert of using ToolsVersion="4.0", you have to replace that in the .csproj to:
<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">


Do vibrations affect inductive sensors?

Question: As the question states, do vibrations cause any influences on inductive sensors? For example, do vibrations on rail, from a locomotive, affect signalling equipment?
Answer: it depends on whether or not there are any ferrous metal parts nearby and whether the vibration of the sensor is out of phase with the vibration of the metal part. If so, then the sensor will pick up a vibration signal.
Comment: Hi Niels, can you provide more information regarding to the out of phase vibration. I believe steel or iron which is ferrous. Cheers!
Comment: To add to this, the sensor purpose is to detect presence of metal not vibrations
Comment: got it. you achieve this by filtering the sensor output to exclude high frequencies and furnish low frequency signals.
Answer: I can't tell about railway sensors, but for automotive (traffic lights).
Where it comes to reliability of readout - "false positives" - no, they don't.
The sensors are inducing a pretty high own frequency (which means any naturally occurring mechanical vibrations are going to be at worst a distant harmonic), and perform a lot of post-processing after detection of frequency as caused by changed inductance.
Both timing and intensity of the change are taken into account. As for timing, both too short pulses (EMI noise, surges, semi-distant lightnings etc) and too slow changes (weather, temperature due to time of day) are ignored; the long ones are integrated into the baseline to compare against too. Similarly, too weak shifts are ignored even if their timing is right - to avoid false positives of vehicles in neighboring lanes.
How do the vibrations affect the inductive sensors? Happening for long enough, with sufficient intensity, they cause material wear and break the induction loops, necessitating repairs. This is the primary disadvantage of inductive sensors and by far the most frequent mode of failure. Luckily such damage is easily detected by the circuitry, so the sensors can alert the services, fall back to backups, or enter "failsafe mode" e.g. producing "always active" signal, resulting in non-optimal but acceptable control, or switching the controller to a failsafe "fixed time" program.
Answer: Coils by themselves are not susceptible to mechanical vibrations.  However, relative motion between a coil and a external magnetic field can cause a signal out of the coil.  This is because the changing magnetic field at the location of the coil causes a signal.  After all, what coils sense is the change in the magnetic field around them.
If the coil and the source of the magnetic field were to vibrate together, then there would be no signal from the coil.  That is because relative to the coil, the magnetic field is not changing.

Do vibrations affect inductive sensors?


deploy web role to azure from source control

Question: is there a way to deploy to an azure webrole from source control.
I dont mind too much which sc system I use,  just want the deploy to occur on 'push' as in azure websites with git.
Answer: There is a free hosted TFS service from Microsoft that allows you to do automatic builds and deployments of your projects from TFS into Azure whenever check-ins occur in the TFS team project.  It is really easy to setup, and takes about 10-15 minutes.  It is currently in preview so it is free.  I have a blog post and a companion video that walks through this.
The blog post and video are for an "Azure Web Site", but the process is nearly identical for an "Azure Cloud Service" (you mentioned a Web Role).
Comment: Is this feature of promoting changes to Azure Web Sites and Azure Cloud Services still the same, this post is from 2012 so I am assuming the changes are no longer in preview, please let me know the current (2016) status of these changes? thanks.
Answer: There is no support for 'Git' Continuous Development (Push) on Cloud Services (Web/Worker Roles), Web Sites only (currently), this blog posts provides some guidance on how to automated things for Web Roles (*note dated SDK): 'Automated Build and Deployment with Windows Azure SDK 1.6'  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tomholl/archive/2011/12/06/automated-build-and-deployment-with-windows-azure-sdk-1-6.aspx
Comment: I want to use 'websites' but cant because of a strange 502 error when calling another website. I have described the problem here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12057646/502-requesting-payment-service-inside-azure-website but have had no response.
Answer: AS Windows Azure Web Role deployment project is strictly bind to specific Packaging the project the source control you are using must be able to provide mechanism to rake your code, and package + deploy it in an accepted way. Packaging does require dependency on Windows Azure SDK tools for specific language you choose.
Based on your selection of tag C#, it seems you are using Visual Studio and TFS, you sure can create MSBUILD script to automate your build and deploy process which could run outside your development machine however within the limits of TFS. This process is described here.
Also if you could Build Server 2010 with TFS you can create automated build/deploy script as described here which will wrok as well.
Bottom line is you can package your application using SDK and deploy package using REST API so it is very easy to build a custom solution to build and deploy directly from any non TFS source server if you are not using one.


Why do box-and-whisker plots use interquartile range, when it deliberately ignores everything below the 25% percentile and above the 75% percentile?

Question: Why ought IQRs, and anything that relies on them like boxplots, be used when they ignore data? I replicated Wikipedia's graphs.
Comment: The values of the min and max are clearly shown in any boxplot. Sometimes positions of extreme values, so-called 'outliers' are also shown. It is by focusing on the distance between first and third quanties (interquartile range) that we get a robust and often measure of variability of a sample. (_Robust_ means not unduly influenced by extreme values.) // Opinions as to what are useful data summaries vary by person and type of task at hand. You are free not to use boxplots if you believe they ignore features of data that are important in what you're doing.
Answer: There's a distinction between data and the information in the data.
For example, if data could be contaminated by a second process - beside the one of interest - whose values would be considered as gross errors, but the desire was to get information about the location or spread of the uncontaminated process, using potentially wildly discrepant parts of the data may be highly misleading.
As a result, it may make sense to choose robust estimates of location and spread around it, and then see where the data lay relative to those.
As an example, consider a process where a value may gain a stray digit (perhaps a typist occasionally hits an extra key, for example). Then once in a while you'll get a value typically on the order of 10 times too large (though it might be anything from only slightly too large to about 90 times too large - if the stray digit occurs first). A boxplot is not badly affected by such contamination, but something that put full weight on the most discrepant points would be.
Such plots can work fairly well for data that may be heavy-tailed and may be somewhat skew, even if there isn't a contaminating process; in those cases the most discrepant observations may not have a lot of useful information in them about location and spread (e.g. take a heavy-tailed location-scale family parametric distribution and see how much weight is put on the extremes of the data in optimal estimation of location and scale).
However, note that even the most outlying observations are not completely ignored by median or interquartile range -- they still "count" in the sense that they contribute to the positioning of those quantiles.
Answer: The IQR is the center 50% of the observations. This stabilizes as you increase the sample size, but the first and last 25% do not:
set.seed(1047)
for(i in 1:6){
    x <- rnorm(10^i)
    boxplot(x, ylim = c(-4, 4), col = "steelblue", main = paste("n =", 10^i))
}

Why? For any continuous distribution from $-\infty$ to $+\infty$, as the sample size increases, so does the chance of observing something further from the center. But the center 50% of a unimodal distribution remains the same. Always extending the whiskers to the extremes makes the boxplot depend heavily on the sample size:
set.seed(1047)
for(i in 1:6){
    x <- rnorm(10^i)
    boxplot(x, ylim = c(-4, 4), col = "steelblue", main = paste("n =", 10^i), range = 0)
}

A boxplot based on the IQR is useful when you don't want your visual summary to be (as) dependent on the sample size. I assumed here that you're using a boxplot to visualize observations that come from unimodal distributions, because otherwise a boxplot is not that useful a summary anyway.


Extract iCloud Password from iTunes backup

Question: How can I extract my forgotten iCloud Password from iTunes backup?
I've tried to use iTunes backup extractor and the I locate accounts.db file
Then I use sqlite browser to explore it,I found only the iCloud mail(which is I have already) and other mails..
is there any ideas please
Answer: Your iCloud password is not preserved within an iTunes backup, unless you stashed it somewhere intentionally.
If you've forgotten your iCloud password, your only real option is to go through the password recovery procedure on iforgot.apple.com


Euphemism and Colloquialism as Literary/Speech Devices

Question: Is it possible for something to be both a 'euphemism' and a 'colloquialism'? If so, what would be some examples of this?
Comment: I found this example [here](http://onlineslangdictionary.com/thesaurus/words+meaning+alcohol.html): Long Island Iced Tea → 516 is an area code in Long Island → 516 now refers to the drink. "A 516 would make a perfect thirst-quencher." As people outside the area wouldn't understand the 516 reference, I think that covers _colloquialism_.
Comment: Hi Erin, the two are unrelated, and there's no reason at all that a colloquialism, could not also be a euphemism.
Answer: Well, a lot of slang words (which are colloquial by definition), are also euphemisms. For example: 'screwed up' and 'getting laid'.
By the way, it's 'colloquial', not 'colloquail'.
Answer: According to JayCat5, a euphemism has a metaphorical component and a colloquial term is an informal term used in day-to-day conversation. In that sense, a euphemism could be a colloquial term depending on its use.
For example, someone might say 'He's been making his living hustlin' people.' In this case 'hustling' is shortened to display the sense of how this sentence was spoken, but 'hustle' is a euphemism for "conning" or 'taking advantage of.'
Comment: You know, "hustler" is not a euphemism.  Imagine you had a hustler or a pimp.  And you described that person as ... "well he is a, ahem, *local businessman*..."  That's a euphemism.  "Hustler" is simply a name, like gangster, criminal, pimp, thug, con-artist, etc.
Comment: Maybe my example was too obscure. The 'he' I was referring to was someone that is not a hustler by trade. Perhaps he was a stockbroker,  and someone describing his occupation as being analogous/metaphorically equivalent to 'hustlin' (i.e. 'obtaining by forceful action or persuasion")

Obviously a hustler would hustle, and a pimp would pimp, etc. The only way the metaphor or analogy works is if the local businessman isn't a hustler, and vice versa.
Comment: **" 'hustle' is a euphemism for "conning" or 'taking advantage of.' "** that sentence is simply wrong, Martin.  Hustle is just a synonym of "con" or "scam".  A **euphemism** for hustle, con or scam could be ... "an *interesting* deal" "an *unusual* transaction" "not your everyday business" and so on.
Comment: What would hustle be a euphemism for?
Comment: HI Martin - "Hustle" is simply not a euphemism. "Hustle" is the "real" word for a con.  A euphemism, for a con, is something like: "business transaction", "*interesting* deal", "a rather special transaction".  You see?  I am more than happy to give more examples, it's my pleasure. Please ask more.
Comment: Ahhh...so in order for it to be a euphemism it has to be describing something "thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt." And because 'hustle' or 'con' is the more offensive term, it can't be considered a euphemism.

Makes sense now. Thanks Mr. Blow!
Comment: You have absolutely clearly explained "euphemism" !!
Answer: The short answer to your question is that it is indeed possible for a word to be both a euphemism and a colloquialism. The rest of my answer is devoted to an example of one such word. (The example word piqued my curiosity to such an extent that I began researching it; I discuss the results of that research below—my apologies for wandering off-topic in this way.)

Long ago, when I lived in Washington, D.C., in the (at the time) rather sketchy neighborhood of Mount Pleasant, I remember passing a mom-and-pop convenience store that had on its door an advertisement for a remedy promising to "restore lost natures." It took me a while to figure out that natures was a colloquialism—and a euphemism—for sexual potency.
Harold Wentworth, American Dialect Dictionary (1944) passes along a bit of (noncolloquial) euphemizing in reporting the relevant meaning of this term:

nature, n. ... 2. "Connubial allure' 1941 n.w.Miss[issippi] Negro {The cunjer-bag} stole her nature ... seeing as how she didn't have her nature back. [William Alexander] Percy Lanterns on the Levee 305.

Here is the full paragraph from Percy's book, Lanterns on the Levee; Recollections of a Planter's Son (1941) containing the relevant usage:

The county prosecuting attorney (incidentally he had been the Cyclops of the Klan) asked me what to do in a pending criminal case. A woman had cut her husband to shreds with a long knife the Negroes call a crab-apple switch. He was recovering. She acknowledged the occurrence, but pleaded in defense that he had placed a spell on her by means of a cunjer-bag. The bag, still in his possession, contained a piece of her red flannel drawers and a hunk of her hair. Its effect was to rob her of connubial allure—in her words, "it stole her nature." She pleaded justification and I thought clearly she was justified. After many consultations with the distracted justice of the peace, on our recommendation the charge against her was dismissed. In the crowded courtroom we expected an emotional scene of gratitude. Instead, the woman burst into tears. She lamented that it didn't make no difference to her if she was out of jail, seeing as how she didn't have her nature back. This seemed reasonable and we asked what we could do about it. We were advised that if we could git that cunjer-bag, she could sew the piece of red flannel "back where it come from" and all would be well. We told the husband he'd be immediately chucked into jail if he didn't fetch that bag instanter. He disappeared while we waited in the court-room. In an incredibly short time he was back with it. The judge solemnly presented the bag to the woman. Everybody was happy. The couple left arm in arm, showing signs of resurgent nature.

The DC advertisement (from the late 1970s) was specifically pitched to older men, and thus seems to have had a significantly different implied meaning from the one intimated in Percy's book.
Comment: William Alexander Percy, by the way, was the son of a U.S. senator from Mississippi, and the uncle of Walker Percy. His book is fascinating and disturbing, as you might expect of a memoir written by a patrician planter living in the post-Reconstruction, pre–Civil Rights South.
Comment: Hi Sven: did you omit something from your answer here?  Is this a long example, of, a euphemism?  The **QA at hand** is extremely simple, "Can a euphemism be a colloquialism?", answer "Yes, of course, they are totally unrelated."
Comment: @JoeBlow: It is a long example of a word that is both a colloquialism and a euphemism. I intended to convey the relevance of the example to the poster's question by this wording in the second sentence (of two) in the opening paragraph of my answer: "_natures_ was a colloquialism—and a euphemism." I apologize if that point got buried in my further discussion of the colloquialism/euphemism _nature_, a discussion that took on a life of its own as I looked more deeply into the word that I had brought up merely as an example (and that the poster absolutely did not ask about).
Comment: Well no problem to me of course - should you add one sentence at the start, such as, *"Here's long example of a word that is both a colloquialism and a euphemism."*  In general here is there a **danger** that since, it is commonplace for colloquialisms to be euphemisms (or vice versa), and there is no special relationship between the two, your answer could be construed as suggesting, that only special unusual cases exist, or could cause some other such confusion?
Comment: @JoeBlow: I think the best course for me would be to add a simple yes/no answer at the beginning of my response—and perhaps also a warning that the back end of my response goes off on a tangent because I got more interested in the example than in saying anything further about the poster's question. I'll try to do that now. Thanks for your constructive advice.
Comment: sounds like fun!  cheers!  *hic*
Answer: Bathroom (or toilet, I suppose, for the UK) activities need euphemisms.  In many languages, "[number] one" and "[number] two" mean pee and poop respectively.  (Of course, even "pee" and "poop" are slightly euphemistic.)
We need these words so we can talk with small children about bathroom needs fairly discreetly in public.
But in northern Germany, I heard "poops" for fart, and "ah-ah" (stress on the first syllable) for poop.
Can someone help me figure out if these words meet the colloquialism test?
Answer: Colloquialism:A metaphorical term to describe a condition mostly used at the dialect level eg; Gone bananas
Euphemism    :A saying describing an event, person, condition, occurrence or similar using a polite way of using a Colloquialism.
****Kicking the bucket** is a Colloquialism but when used in conversation to soften the impact of Dying it is used as a Euphemism.
The context in which is used defines whether it is a Colloquialism or a Euphemism.
IN the other contributions, the term Hustle (Colloquialism) becomes a euphemism when applied to someone who may be a shrewd negotiator


stylus replacements

Question: i've recently lost the stylus to my phone, and seeing as how i've got some commissions needing to be finished, i really need help on what to use for a replacement. i've tried just about everything- cotton swab, band-aid, pencil, ds stylus, expo marker cap, headphone jack, even a cashew- and yet nothing works, so far. my phone is a samsung, and i assume that it has something to do with that. i've heard that aluminum foil works but i don't quite think we have any. if anyone knows any other solutions, it'd be greatly appreciated if you would share.
Answer: Your phone screen senses your touch by detecting changes in electrical field strength caused by your finger (which is slightly capable of conducting electricity) touching the surface. This technology is known as a capacitive touch screen. An alternative technology used to be more prevalent  called resistive touch, that relied upon pressure deforming the screen and bringing two electrically conductive layers inside the screen onto contact with each other
Resistive screens are more precise, whereas capacitive screens are harder to damage and can detect being touched in multiple places at once
Critically in your experiments, resistive screens can be touched with anything, because it is entirely the screen deforming that detects the location. Capacitive screens must be touched with something electrically conductive and none of the things you've tried are. You said you'd tried a ds stylus - if that's a stylus from a Nintendo DS then it's a good example of a resistive screen- take a look at the screen sideways as you press on it and you'll see the screen surfaces is soft and deforms when pressed. The DS stylus is effectively just a pointy bit of plastic
The upshot of all this is you're going to have to replace your stylus with another one dedicatedly designed to work with a capacitive screen, there isn't really a lifehack that works out other than eg the metal handle of a knife or similar - and even then these objects aren't as effective because the end doesn't make superb contact with an area of the screen (dedicated styluses are slightly soft at the tip) and really you only risk damaging the screen surface
Fortunately, until you get a replacement stylus you should find that a finger works, though it may lack the required precision that a stylus gave you. You'll really only be able to counter that by zooming in so your imprecise touch can hit a bigger area. On the upside they're quite hard to lose :)
Comment: Pen-ultimate paragraph? chuckle, chuckle.
Comment: You give such an excellent explanation of how the screens work, yet no alternative to a stylus. The usual styluses have very small tips, so there must be a material that conducts enough electricity to be recognized by the screens. I'm thinking about a fridge magnet (iron oxide) or maybe just a long wire coiled inside an empty pen, but I have no idea whether those would actually work.
Comment: Did I not cover that in my penultimate paragraph? It's exactly about conducting electricity, it's about being specifically conductive enough to generate a capacitive effect that the phone can detect. It will be calibrated for a finger/human skin and styluses will be calibrated to exhibit similar properties. There isn't really a lifehack I'm aware of that will work as effectively as a stylus; replace the stylus

stylus replacements


Soul transfer belief

Question: Does Christianity believe in a soul transfer?
Soul transfer
Answer: No.
The spirit that rightfully and natively inhabits each person's body, his or her own spirit, is not fungible.
The notion of soul transfer contradicts the reality of God's final judgment on each soul. They cannot trade places, since that would undermine the eternal law of justice.
Although spirits of the deceased and perhaps of the unborn may inhabit another person's body during this mortal life, that habitation is temporary and is mutable, and the final state of each soul is determined by God in final judgment. In the end, souls are not transferable, and each person lives his own life to the end of choosing what kind of eternal destiny he will inherit.

Soul transfer belief


Short story about pink animals that are born like pink peppers

Question: This man crash lands on a planet with two species of animals: brown and pink. The brown animals are afraid of the pink ones and the pink ones welcome the man but exhibit strange behaviors. One takes on the characteristics of one of the deceased crew women. He eats the pink peppers and soon is laid into the ground for pink peppers to grow out of him. The pink things looked like monkeys and pigs. The brown animals were the same but were afraid of the pink ones. They stayed away from them.
Comment: Wow, you don't usually see such creepy body text following such an adorable subject line.
Comment: You wouldn't happen to remember any details on what the animals looked like do you? It seems most of my generic searches, involving pink animals/aliens/creatures, results in alot of "adult oriented" sci-fi.
Comment: For the second time today, going to say it sounds like early Robert Sheckley.
Answer: My Thing Friday by Brian Lumley.
From a review:

Brian Lumley's My Thing Friday from the anthology of terror and the
  macabre Dark Delicacies narrates the tale of Greg Griffiths, the lone
  survivor of the Albert Einstein: The space ship hailing from the
  Greater Mars Orbital Station.
...
However, the story is much more about his interactions with the beings
  of the planet rather than a tale of survival. Humanlike pink
  creatures roam the forests surrounding the clearing where the space
  ship landed, and birdlike pink creatures and hog-like pink
  creatures meander around the wreckage.
Griffiths, being a simple engineer, does not realize until it is too
  late how these docile humanlike pink creatures are the dominant
  species on the planet. His voice journal ends abruptly with his dying
  words and the reader finally realizes why the humanlike pink creatures
  held such a reverence for the dead, including Griffiths' crew members.
Comment: There's a chance this is right, but is there any mention of the peppers?
Comment: So I looked the story up in Google Books and was able to read most of it, and there is, actually it's carrots! They're described as "purple carrots" that taste "like a cross between chili peppers and green onions".


Information Security Validation

Question: One of the business units (ou1) within our company is in the process of establishing an encrypted communication feed with an external vendor. The vendor provided a set of requirements for the actual implementation. That ou1 is asking info sec to approve the solution without having any runbook or SoP written yet. They already explained the solution to me and it is in accordance with the vendor requirements. What is my exposure, if vendor requests an audit at a later time (By that time all documentation will be in place)?
Comment: Isn't that specified in the details of the contract that you are signing with the external vendor? I don't see how we could provide you with a specific answer.
Comment: What do you mean by "my exposure"? Are you the info sec person approving the solution? Are *you * comfortable approving something that isn't even implemented yet and has no controls in place?
Comment: Controls are in place, I am comfortable with the implementation, the only concern is obstructing some businesses availability because of lack of documentation  (actually a delay in posting it to the audited repository)
Comment: We're not here to do your job for you.  Nobody here knows anything near enough detail about context (your company, its policies, its agreements with external vendor etc.) in order to give you any sort of sensible answer.
Answer: This is most definitely something that should be outlined in the contract between your company and the vendor. Is it not possible for you to contact the vendor and discuss the question you have asked here? Because unless someone here works for, and is a party to the specific contract, I wouldn't see how anyone here could really answer the question for you without knowing the terms of the agreement.
Comment: Yes, the whole implementation is clearly outlined in the contract and is executed in accordance. The only missing part is the documentation from the implementation team that is delayed. Business want to sign the contract, and I am in the middle. I trust the team with the implementation and with the fact that documentation will be in place before going live. Should I vouch for them? what is my exposure?
Comment: This is one of the reasons I hope to avoid such positions as you are in. For myself, personally, I play it safe in such instances and would petition for a runbook or the SoP before committing. Contract law is nothing to tally with lightly in the enterprise world and if you don't feel right about the lack of a runbook or SoP, I would make that known at least to my supervisor or someone else in the company with at least equal authority as you.

I am always a fan of a second or third opinion, but I feel like we here, being absent of personal involvement are at a help-wise disadvantage.

Information Security Validation


Can we have more than one address in transaction inputs and outputs addresses attribute?

Question: In the transaction data of bitcoin can we have more than one address element in adresses attribute of inputs and outputs of a transaction.
Comment: Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.
Answer: Despite what blockchain explorers might show you, The network format for Bitcoin transactions contains no addresses.
Transactions can have multiple inputs and multiple outputs. Each output has a locking script. An address is a convenient abstraction of a script. Thus a transaction can have at least two and sometimes thousands of associated addresses.
Each input and each output for common types of transaction are only associated with one address.
A multi-signature transaction can be more complex. This might be what you are thinking of.

Related

In what format does a block store the transaction data?


Updating bound properties from a background thread

Question: I have a WPF control that is bound to properties in my ViewModel. To my surprise (as this doesn't seem like a well-advertised feature of WPF), there seem to be no issues with changing the bound properties from a background thread. My UI updates with no exceptions. Why is this? Are there any performance issues with updating a bound property from a background thread, or any other limitations?
Comment: That is one reason why binding is to be preferred to using the dispatcher when possible.
Comment: It is probably callling Invoke on the main UI thread to change the UI
Answer: WPF automatically ensures that bindings are updated on the main thread.
There's no performance hit.  If anything it's better to do the property updates on the background thread. Dispatching updates to the main thread would increase the amount of work being done there.  You would be updating both the View and the ViewModel, rather than just the View.  The difference should normally be negligible, but if a lot of updates are happening rapidly then it might cause the UI's responsiveness to degrade more quickly.
Answer: This is because WPF takes care about marshalling the binded data to UI thread.
This works only for scalar data, as much as I know. For the collections, you have to take care about correct managing it between non UI and UI threads.
There is no notable overhead, as finally it should do the same thing you would do in multithreading (may be in slightly more optimized way).
Answer: It depends.
It only "automatically" does this (IIRC) for bindings against properties that implement INotifyPropertyChanged.  DependencyProperties and DependencyObjects have thread affinity and will throw if you try to update them from another thread.
The Binding class has a property called IsAsync which helps in some special cases when updating a property from another thread so that the update won't block the UI.  You don't really need it until you do.


Can't log into Mojang account, my email/username is correct

Question: I have multiple emails, and am almost completely sure which email my minecraft account is set up with. I got minecraft a long time ago and do not have a mojang account. It won't let me create one.  (My username is KDHandshake) and I put in the password that I use to log into minecraft. I want to change my skin, but can't because I cannot log into mojang/create an account. I'm just really confused.
Comment: Are you logging into mojang with your email or your username?
Comment: Let it send you a password reset mail, then you'll see which mail address it is and you'll have the password.
Answer: Your account is unmigrated. This means that it is an old type of account. Unmigrated accounts' skins (and names) cannot be changed. It should be migrated to a new, Mojang account. For this, you will need to know the e-mail you registered your account with, the username, and the password. You can migrate it here. After migration, you will be able to change the skin, name or any other detail of the account.
If this doesn't work, your account has been compromize (hacked). You will need to contact Mojang with your Transaction ID, and they can recover the account for you.
The Transaction ID is an unique ID which you can use to proove that you are indeed the owner of the account. If your Transaction ID is lost, you are unable to recover your account, unless you recover your Transaction ID first. There are ways to do that, which can be found here. The Transaction ID can be found in the original e-mail, that you got when you have purchased Minecraft. It looks similar to this:
<code>braintree:abcdefgh
</code>
Note: This is not an actual Transaction ID. Transaction IDs should not be given out as they can be used to steal your account. Also, 'braintree' can be a different word too.
In case your account was purchased using a Gift Code, your Gift Code is the Transaction ID.
You can contact Mojang to help you with recovering your account here.
Answer: You're not supposed to use your username. Instead, try using your email address that you signed up with.
If you're not sure about the email, (like mentioned above) you can try using your transaction info from when you first bought the account to try and recover the email.
It helps to know your recovery questions.


2 sounds reaching ear within 0.1 seconds and after 0.1secons

Question: Some books suggest that if two sounds reaches our ear within 0.1 seconds then ear or brain perceive them as one sound and to hear an echo the time difference must be of at least 0.1 seconds. What does the bolded part means? For example if one phones plays violin and another phone plays guitar at the same time and place I will be able to know that two different sounds are being played and not one sound.
Answer: Well you can distinguish them if they are at different places but in a song or while listening to music you won't be able to.
Also the echo will have the same frequency as original sound while the different instruments have different frequency
Comment: As it's currently written, your answer is unclear. Please [edit] to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer).
Answer: This phenomenon is referred to as either the "Precedence Effect" or "Haas Effect" (due to the researcher who introduced it first).
It is about the Inter-aural Time Difference (ITD), which is the term used to declare the Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) of a sound between the two ears. Please note here that this has to do with the same sound and not two distinct sounds. Additionally, the first experiments had been done with simple monochromatic (i.e. sinusoidal) stimuli (I do not know if the phenomenon has been investigated further with complex sounds).
Example
One example which you can easily verify yourself is to use two loudspeakers, or a pair of headphones (the latter is better since you get rid of cross-talk between the two ears), is to duplicate a sound (start easy with simple sinusoidal sounds with somewhat sharp attack and release times, or use impulsive sounds) and gradually introduce delay to one of the them until you hear them as two distinct repetitions of the same audio event.
Remarks
It is important to state that the transition from the perception of a single event to two distinct events is not instantaneous after a specific delay value is exceeded. After a delay value, the perceptually single event will acquire a harsh sonic character and after the delay is increased more by an adequate value two events will be perceived. After the delay is increased more, the harshness will start to go away
Note that the delay value that will lead to the perception of two distinct sound events is not a constant value and strongly depends on the spectrum of the sound, its amplitude envelope (which is related to its spectral content), other sounds that may happen to be audible at the same time and a lot more. The phenomenon is highly non-linear and it cannot be easily described with a single number like the $0.1 s$ that you provide (which is already a quite long delay and will most probably result in the perception of two distinct audio events).


'n-minute walk' for other forms of transportation

Question: I'm familiar with the expression n-minute walk to describe something at a 10-minute distance by foot, but I was stuck when I tried to use this expression with other kinds of transportation. For example, if I want to express something apart by 10-minute distance by bus, how can I express that in a similar way to n-minute walk?
Answer: You can say:

a ten-mile trip by bus
a ten-mile drive by car
a thousand-mile flight by plane

etc. The travel descriptor changes depending on the mode of transportation.
Comment: It could also be `a ten minute bus ride`.
Comment: This can also describe the time as in the OP. For example, six-hour flight. Also, **three-day cruise** by ship.


What exactly does the Ardent's Wormhole Plunge do?

Question: I am the DM in a campaign in which one of my friends plays an ardent. Everyone agrees with my friend that his ardent's Wormhole Plunge power kills any enemies that go into it. Is this true? It's annoying when he kills bosses in one hit.
Comment: Welcome to the site. Take the [tour]. You'll notice I edited your question a little bit; I hope that's okay. Thank you for your participation and have fun.
Answer: It used to one-hit kill non-flying enemies who entered the zone, but that was ridiculous so it was errata-ed.
Wormhole Plunge creates a zone. Any time a creature enters the zone, the ardent can teleport it as a free action. Because teleportation, unlike forced movement, does not prevent you from putting the target in midair, ardents could teleport the target to a square above the zone. The target would then fall back into the zone, taking falling damage and re-entering the zone so the ardent gets to teleport them again. Repeat as many times as needed until the target is dead.
Because Wizards of the Coast tried pretty hard to fix any powers that allow one-hit kills, Wormhole Plunge received errata in May of 2010 that limited the ardent to only being able to teleport a creature in the zone for free once per round. It is highly recommended that you use the errata when playing 4th edition D&D, as Wormhole Plunge is hardly the only power or combo that was broken when originally published.
If your players are strongly resistant to fixing the power with errata, try using some enemies who can teleport the PCs to inflict large amounts of falling damage. Most players will agree to give up one-hit kill mechanics if there's a high risk of monsters using them against the party. Every 4e group I've played in has eventually house-ruled teleportation to not allow you to teleport foes to places where they'll take falling damage; it's just too easy a way to deal damage, both for the PCs and for the monsters.
Comment: It's also worth noting that even pre-errata, the monster would get a saving throw for each teleport into "hindering terrain" (basically any square that would cause it damage), and if it succeeds it falls prone in its current square instead of being teleported.  See http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/13494/can-you-teleport-a-monster-vertically-up-and-thus-damage-them-when-they-fall
Comment: Actually, I say "pre-errata", but I don't know whether this saving throw rule existed in May 2010.  Quite possibly it didn't.
Answer: Wormhole plunge does a few different things.
First, on a hit against AC, Wormhole Plunge does Weapon+Cha mod damage.
On a miss against AC, Wormhole Plunge does half damage.
Second, you can teleport the target Wis mod squares. If he ends this teleport adjacent to an ally, that ally can make a melee basic attack against the target.
Third, a zone is created in the space that the target started in. This zone lasts until the end of your next turn. Once per round as a free action, you can teleport a creature standing in this zone 3 spaces.
Fourth, at the start of each creature's turn who is within 3 squares of the zone is pulled 1 square towards the zone.
None of these things instantly kills an enemy who ends up in the zone.


Correlation estimation on Half-Normal Distribution

Question: Let $$(X,Y)\sim N\left(\begin{pmatrix}0\\0\end{pmatrix},\begin{pmatrix}1&\rho\\\rho&1\end{pmatrix}\right)$$ and let we are observing  $(|X_1|,|Y_1|),\dots,(|X_n|,|Y_n|)$ independently. I wish to estimate $\rho$ given this observation. Is it possible? I worry I can't because what we observe are the absolute value.
Comment: Given additional information (such as a prior distribution for $\rho$ or a restriction of the sign of $\rho$) estimation would be possible, but otherwise $\rho$ is not identifiable because (since $\pm (X,-Y)\sim N\left(\pmatrix{0\\0},\pmatrix{1&-\rho\\-\rho&1}\right)$) the likelihood for $-\rho$ is exactly the likelihood for $\rho$. What sort of information do you have of this nature?
Comment: No, it's not the same; I'll see if I can construct an answer.
Comment: You could, however, estimate $|\rho|$ - while it's not what you asked for, it might serve for some purposes.
Comment: @Glen_b: OK Thanks. So, if I assume $\rho>0$ or negative then I can. Is it like estimation $\rho$ on usual normal distribution?
Comment: @whuber: Thank a lot for your helps. I think, I can assume $\rho>0$.
Comment: @Glen_b: thanks a lot. I'll wait your answer. Thanks again for your help.
Answer: Because taking the absolute values is an area-preserving transformation of the plane that maps four quadrants onto one, the likelihood of $\rho$ for data $(x,y)$ is the sum of the likelihoods under a Normal$\left((0,0), \pmatrix{1&\rho\\\rho&1}\right)$ distribution of the four data values $(\pm x, \pm y)$:
$$\lambda(\rho;x,y)=\frac{1}{2 \pi  \sqrt{1-\rho ^2}} \left(2\exp\left(\frac{x^2-2 \rho  x y+y^2}{2 \left(\rho ^2-1\right)}\right) + 2\exp\left(\frac{x^2+2 \rho  x y+y^2}{2 \left(\rho ^2-1\right)}\right)\right).$$
The maximum likelihood estimator works well for extreme values of $\rho$ but is highly uncertain for small to moderate values, as attested by these simulations (of $1000$ iterations of a sample of $100$ values).  Even visually the plot of $100$ points with $\rho=1/4$ is not readily distinguishable from the plot with $\rho=2/3$:

Each row depicts the situation with a different value of $\rho$. The vertical lines in the "Likelihood" plots show the locations of the maxima in the samples depicted at left; these are the maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs). The vertical lines in the "Estimation Distribution" plots of the MLEs for $1000$ additional simulated data sets are located at the true value of $\rho$ held constant throughout each simulation.  Any value of $\rho$ for which the likelihood is larger than the dotted gray line can be considered within a two-sided $95\%$ confidence interval.
The R code that produced these results can readily be adapted for further study of the Maximum Likelihood estimator.  In particular, the estimation distribution for small values of $\rho$ is bimodal and the MLE appears to be biased a little low: this is worth understanding well before relying on the MLE.
library(mvtnorm) # exports rmvnorm()
likelihood.log <- function(rho, xy) {
  const <- (dim(xy)[1]/2) * log((2*pi)^2 * (1-rho^2))
  sum(log(2*exp((xy[,1]^2 + xy[,2]^2 - 2*xy[,1]*xy[,2]*rho) / (2*(-1 + rho^2))) +
        2*exp((xy[,1]^2 + xy[,2]^2 + 2*xy[,1]*xy[,2]*rho) / (2*(-1 + rho^2))))) - const
}

half.normal <- function(rho.0=0, n=100, alpha=0.05, n.iter=1000) {
  # rho.0:  True value of rho
  # n    :  Sample size
  # alpha:  Determines gray line (for the confidence interval)
  # n.iter: Number of simulation iterations
  #
  # Simulate a dataset and plot it.
  #
  xy <- abs(rmvnorm(n, mean=c(0,0), sigma=matrix(c(1,rho.0,rho.0,1),2)))
  plot(xy, main=paste("Data (rho=", round(rho.0,2), ")", sep=""))
  #
  # Plot the log likelihood function for this dataset.
  #
  rho.min <- tanh(atanh(rho.0)-1/2)
  rho.max <- tanh(atanh(rho.0)+1/2)
  rho <- seq(rho.min, rho.max,length.out=511)
  l <- sapply(rho, function(rho) likelihood.log(rho, xy))
  i <- l >= max(l) - 8

  plot(rho[i], l[i],
       type="l", xlab="rho", ylab="Log likelihood",
       main="Likelihood")
  fit.ml <- optimize(function(rho) likelihood.log(rho, xy), interval=c(0,1),
            maximum=TRUE)
  abline(v = fit.ml$maximum, col="Red")
  abline(h = fit.ml$objective - qchisq(1-alpha, 1), lty=3, col="Gray")
  #
  # Simulate additional data to study the estimation distribution.
  #
  sim <- replicate(n.iter, {
    xy <- abs(rmvnorm(n, mean=c(0,0), sigma=matrix(c(1,rho.0,rho.0,1),2)))
    fit.ml <- optimize(function(rho) likelihood.log(rho, xy), interval=c(0,1),
              maximum=TRUE)
    fit.ml$maximum
  })
  abline(v = fit.ml$maximum, col="Red")
  hist(sim, main="Estimation Distribution")
  abline(v = abs(rho.0), col="Red")
  #
  # Return the average estimate (to assess bias).
  #
  mean(sim)
}

set.seed(17)
par(mfrow=c(3,3))
half.normal(1/4)
half.normal(2/3)
half.normal(0.99)

Comment: As you can see from the data plots, even a human being may have a hard time estimating $\rho$ with small sample sizes. The uncertainty is inherent in the problem, not in the estimation procedure. Indeed, as the sample size increases the estimates of $\rho$ will become more certain.
Comment: Very nice answer and explanation. But, how de we know if the MLE works well for extreeme $\rho$ nad doesn't work well for small to moderate $\rho$?
Comment: @Jlamprong Look at the spreads of the estimates in the plots: the range is only $0.008$ for $\rho=0.99$ and $0.7$ for $\rho=0.25$.
Comment: I see. Do you have an advice or suggestion to handle small to moderate $\rho$? By the way, if the sample size goes to infinity then this MLE will work well for every $\rho$, won't it?
Answer: Here's a relatively simple* approach I've been thinking about.
You can work out that (in this particular instance) $\text{corr}(X^2,Y^2)=\rho^2$.
(I can give the derivation if needed).
So one quick and easy way to estimate $\rho$ would be to square your absolute values, and take the square root of the correlation: $\hat{\rho}=\sqrt{\text{corr}(X^2,Y^2)}$.
Note that this estimator won't be unbiased. Indeed, in with small correlations (as noted below), it has a problem, in that the correlation might be negative. In large samples, (at least with large correlation) it does moderately well.
Here's an example simulation:
With 10000 samples of size 100 with $\rho=0.8$, the mean correlation estimate was 0.79, and the distribution of correlation estimates looked like this:

This seems to perform adequately*, at least with reasonably large correlations.
* if not very efficiently compared to ML estimation.
As whuber notes in comments, there's a problem with smaller $\rho$ of negative sample correlation between the squares; indeed that becomes fairly likely. Since we have specified that $\rho$ will be non-negative, his suggestion of replacing negatives with 0 is a pretty good one, but if the correlations aren't reasonably large I wouldn't recommend this approach.
Comment: That is an interesting approach. The variance of the estimate is larger than the variance of the MLE estimate, though, making it inefficient. (For $\rho=0.8,n=100$ the MLE is 3.5 times more efficient; the inefficiency grows worse with larger $|\rho|$.) There are problems when $|\rho|\lt 1/2$, because then the correlation coefficient of $(X^2, Y^2)$ has a good chance of being negative: how will you take its square root? (Replacing a negative value with $0$ works well.) With large $n$ and moderate $|\rho|$, perhaps it could be recommended as a quick-and-dirty alternative to the (fussier) MLE.
Comment: Indeed, there are a number of potential issues with small $\rho$, as you note; since we know the value we want will not be negative, the idea of replacing negative values with 0 is a good one. My use of the word 'adequate' was intended to convey that it wasn't especially efficient. I'll be more explicit.
Comment: I find the issue with negative correlations enlightening (+1), because when one replaces negative sample $\rho$ with $0$, the sampling distribution of your estimate of course gains a spike near zero and becomes bimodal, exactly as in the case of the MLE. I suspect, though, that this estimator based on $X^2$ and $Y^2$ is inadmissible because it appears to be less efficient than another one (the MLE) for every possible $\rho$.
Comment: @whuber: Thank you very much for your helps. I could derive why $\rho^2=corr(X^2,Y^2)$
Comment: Jlamprong -- While my approach is pretty simple, and somewhat instructive, it's actually not nearly as useful as whuber's. I urge you to reconsider accepting his answer -- it's a substantially better one in my opinion.


Does a high voltage electrostatic precipitator power supply provide a balanced or unbalanced output?

Question: Does a high voltage electrostatic precipitator power supply create a balanced or unbalanced electrical output in relation to the primary side/ground? If the device provides an unbalanced output, does the power come off of the negative or positive side?
Here is an example of such a power supply: http://www.ebay.com/itm/High-voltage-electrostatic-precipitator-power-supply-with-400W-60kV-/152550032861. Also, here is a schematic for the power supply:
Comment: well, as you can see from the schematic, the transformer galvanically separates the secondary side from the primary, so you really can't talk about having anything relative to primary side ground (as that doesn't matter at all). Does that answer your question?
Comment: Dude, you make me nervous.  40kV and 10mA continuous is enough to kill you stone cold dead. You have yet to grasp that positive and negative depend on the ground level (which you verify easily and safely with a couple of batteries) but insist on playing with dangerous stuff.  Please stop.  If you don't care about your own safety, consider what could happen to others around you.  If you get toasted and that thing stays on you've left behind a hazard for whoever finds your remains.
Comment: The schematic appears to be for a different power supply all together.  The schematic is clearly for 3 phase input, and the one on ebay is clearly a single phase unit - that also has some controls that this schematic lacks.
Comment: go here https://www.researchgate.net/search.Search.html?type=researcher&query=Despotovic%20precipitator
Answer: Joshua Guertler -
Please stop messing around with this stuff. You are going to get someone hurt. Why do I say this? Because your questions indicate that you have no idea what you are talking about.
Does a high voltage electrostatic precipitator power supply create a balanced or unbalanced electrical output in relation to the primary side/ground?
No. Or rather, maybe. But in light of the rest of your question, no.
Also, here is a schematic for the power supply:
And again, no. That is not remotely the power supply for the unit you linked.
So, you don't understand what balanced or unbalanced means, and you don't realize that the schematic cannot possibly apply to the eBay unit you linked to. (Or maybe you do, since in your previous question you referred to the schematic as being "generic". But in that case it cannot be "the power supply". Either way you are hopelessly confused.) Marcus Miller obliquely pointed this out in comment, but it apparently passed you by.
It's perfectly possible to make a HV supply which is either balanced or unbalanced, it's just that there is no reason to think that either term applies to the unit under consideration.
Please find somebody who has a clue about this stuff and take his or her advice. I'm afraid you're going to hurt yourself or someone else.
Answer: The source is balanced differential output from a HF transformer but the load is unbalanced with HVDC ionizing particles may detonate more on the + terminal since electrons emit freely from conductors and transfer charge to dust which become -ve and discharge against +ve terminal attraction. Thus dust might detonate in the centre of the stack rod and be converted to a benign gas. ( just a hunch)
Thus since arc impedance is low compared to the capacitance and high R of the stack electrodes. It is unbalanced pulse current which creates large EMI unless a HiV CM choke is used with twisted pairs low ESL wiring.
The imbalance is due to the earth grounding of the stack and polarity of discharge on one side relative to the series current limiting impedance of the transformer.
The WYE 3 phase may be earth grounded at the Neutral or it may be floating Delta windings, but common mode coupling to ground at RF is makes it relatively low impedance high capacitance coupling compared to the earth grounded stack capacitance and inductance to the HVDC source.  Thus high DM noise but shielded by the stack somewhat and more important, the CM noise of the feed wires , so attention to EMI must consider CM balancing at RF from 50kHz to 1GHz and discharge currents via the stack, which is not visible from the logic diagram..
Comment: I once used a HVDC +/- alternated @ 1Hz commercial air deionizer with a 1cm pin to inside a gnd cone to precipitate dust outside a class 100 clean room. The spectral noise went from 1Hz all the way up to 1/2 wavelength of the arc length which caused excessive EMI coupling into sensitive magnetic circuits inside the cleanroom for large disk servo write/read verify on HDD disks. So I had to remove it . Too much EMI. In another case a large safety 1Hz flash Xenon tube during HiV  transformer tests created enough GHz noise to block all cell phones inside  factory. It must have affected the Rx AGC.
Comment: Could I get a negative voltage off of the negative side if I grounded the positive side of the power supply's output?
Comment: Yes and I dug up the researchers documents and thats exactly what he did.  His conclusion was that although particulate emissions were reduced vs 50Hz thrystor, they could have been reduced further with the -ve electrode by maximizing the electrode gap from 30cm . However this stack was drawing 50MW of power to remove the high coal dust and changes were not feasible. Yet they were still exceeding emissions.
Comment: The EBAY gadget is a like a 400W BIC lighter , while the schematic is a simplified version of a 68kW supply   load   current   ESPI=1A  and  load  voltage  ESPV=68kV which is a blow torch.   Unless you have worked with HVDC, you have a lot to learn on the risks.  Be sure to current limit with and insulate with 8mm rubber coated wire. and 500cm BIL200kV porcelain bushings.  DC is prone to partial discharge that can cause cardiac arrest from leakage fields spanning > 10 meter
Answer: There is not enough information on that eBay ad to determine whether the output is AC, -DC, or +DC.
You need to ask the seller about that, because those four flyback transformers might very well have built-in diodes that output +HV that are impossible to change! That was the case for many of the last CRT-type television sets, which were +DC and could not be changed. I have a whole box of those here somewhere, and they are destined for the garbage.
If there are no embedded diodes --and the output is AC-- then it might be possible to add some HV diodes so that the output is -DC.
Maybe you'll get lucky and find that the HV output is -DC, but I seriously doubt it.


Why have some questions I've flagged not been deleted?

Question: I have flagged questions for moderator attention to delete them, but still I didn't get any response. Even my friend has old ID then me on stackoverflow and the same thing happen to him. So is there any time limit to delete the question if not then moderator should have to response for that?
Comment: Flagging a question for deletion does not guarantee that a question will be deleted. The moderator who examines your flag still gets to make the decision whether or not to delete. Moderators can mark your flag valid (indicating that it has merit), even if they choose not to take action on your flag. They are not obligated to respond to your flag in any other way.  There is no time limit for acting on moderator flags, although they usually get looked at within 24 hours.
Answer: If you visit your Flagging Summary* you can find a list of the dispositions for your flags and whether or not they were deemed valid, invalid, disputed, or if they are awaiting review.

* You can get to your flagging summary page by clicking on your user name, then clicking on your flag weight.
Comment: If it was deemed Valid then a moderator will have taken the appropriate action, *but it may not be what you wanted to happen*. If they deemed it Invalid, it likely won't get acted upon. However, if you strongly feel a certain question or answer needs attention yet a moderator has disagreed, you can post a link to the question/answer on Meta and ask for information as to why things happened like they did.
Comment: If they are valid then what it mean and what if they are invalid?
Comment: Valid means a moderator agreed with your flag. Invalid means they disagreed. Disputed means other flaggers disagreed.
Comment: So can we re-flagged the same question.
Comment: Current wording as-of today is "Helpful" and "Declined" (instead of Valid and Invalid)


LACP on stacked HP 2920-48G

Question: It is the first time that I am working with HP switches.
I want to use LACP on two stacked HP 2920-48G switches.
Does somebody have an example of the configuration I need to use on both switches ?
Also, I want to connect the two stacked switches with two other stacked switches by using the 10GbE module. Is it just plug and connect or do I have to configure something ?
Comment: Did any answer help you? if so, you should accept the answer so that the question doesn't keep popping up forever, looking for an answer. Alternatively, you could post and accept your own answer.
Answer: If you're just using 1 10Gb port to connect them, you only have to add that link into the VLANs you want to share between the switches, if any. Out of the box, there'd be no configuration on your side w/ 1 link
With 2 links, you will want to form a link aggregation in one of 2 ways. Say you're going to link over 1/49 and 2/49 (first 10Gb on both switches in the stack) to ports 1/50 and 2/50 on the 2nd stack (second 10Gb on both switches in the stack). It's like this:
Stack 1:
trunk 1/49,2/49 trk1 lacp

Stack 2:
trunk 1/50,2/50 trk1 lacp

The name 'trk1' becomes the virtual port name. It doesn't have to match on both sides.
The last keyword lacp can also be trunk. The difference is that lacp is a more stateful connection, trunk being static port bundle.
Finally, if you have VLANs that need to transit the trunk, you have to allow those across. Just like the other ports are set up, but with the 'trk1' port. If you had, say VLANs 10 and 20, you'd do this on both stacks:
vlan 10

tagged trk1

vlan 20

tagged trk1

Comment: FYI, you can use the `{}` button in the Stack Exchange GUI editor to auto-monospace any text you have highlighted in the editor.

LACP on stacked HP 2920-48G


What causes deformed Spathiphyllum leaves?

Question: Some of the leaves of my Spathiphyllum sprout with deformed edges.  They don't turn yellow or brown at the tips over time - they start out like this.  Oddly most leaves are perfectly normal and this only happens to about a third of the leaves.
Comment: Maybe something going on at soil level,  as the leaves emerge - looks like pest damage at the leaf tip when they're just emerging which, as the leaf grows up and develops means the damage seems widespread. Not sure what could be causing it, but just examine the top of the soil in the pot thoroughly, inspect all parts of the plant with a magnifying glass in a good light, especially any newly emerging leaves.
Comment: Please elaborate on your watering and fertilizer habits.  What type of soil you are using.  My initial response is too much fertilizer and salt build up.  But please, give more pictures and information about everything concerning this plant, your experience with plants and the environment for this plant...anything at all!
Answer: I saw this a lot when I was doing interior plant maintenance. It is a burn due to high dissolved salts.  It does not get better and often results in the plant being replaced due to the damage.
There are a few causes:

if seen on new plants this indicates the grower did a last application of fertilizer that was too strong for the light levels at the home
older plants can have this too and there are a few conditions that act together as triggers

low light levels mean low growth rate
peat based soil mix has a limited ability to buffer salts as it ages
high ph alkaline water being used

For both causes I recommend

moving to a higher light level
doing a one time drench with distilled water. Pour enough through that water runs freely out of the bottom of the pot.  The distilled water will lower the level of dissolved salts
repotting with a mix of your choice. Tropical plant soil less potting mix is easy to find
Comment: i think "burn" is a good description of what i'm seeing.  this is an old plant and hasn't been fertilized in a very long time.  i moved it to a higher light lever recently and it has responded very well.  will now try the distilled water & soil recommendations.

the plant is approx 16" H and in a 2-3 gallon pot.  is that enough room or should i put it in a larger pot?
Comment: @Nina Drench with distilled water first,  no need for a larger pot.  however as an older plant you can take it out of the existing pot, cut a few inches of roots off the bottom, add new soil and pop it back in


Does unbricking Asus RT N16 Router require extra hardware?

Question: I bought a new Asus RT N16 router today. I am going to load Tomato USB on the router. If I brick the router during this process, do I need any extra hardware to unbrick the router? I read somewhere that you need to connect to the router using serial cable to unbrick some routers. Is that the case with N16?
Answer: Yes, I can't tell for your model or the router software but I have a Linksys Wag200G and sometimes I use a special serial cable to unbrick the router. It's not very often but it's extremly useful to have it. Here is some link about JTAG interface and cable:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/JTAG_pinouts#Asus_RT-N16
http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/rt-n16-jtag.31879/

You need to buy some cheap electronics and solder. Disclaimer: You need some experience with soldierung it's very likely you brick your device. I've bricked one Linksys WAG200 by wrong soldering and also I think you will loose warranty and so on. Do it at your own risk!
Comment: Thank you. Can you please provide more details about the serial cable. Do I need to solder the cable, or can I connect it directly?
Comment: @JoyceBabu - If you don't already know how to use a JTAG cable I suggest you do your research.  If you follow the directions loading the firmware won't brick your router.


No audio on Mac Pro after Yosemite upgrade

Question: I have looked at other people's problems regarding this issue but the way they solved it cannot fix my problem as I don't have any options to change anything. see images.
Comment: What have you tried to troubleshoot these problems? You mention having tried other people's solutions, but you don't indicate what they were. Did you try all the suggestions in this post? http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/152649/sound-not-working-when-running-os-10-yosemite
Answer: I had the same problem after upgrading to Yosemite and I've been looking for an answer on StackOverflow ever since. I found an answer which was not upvoted so it was harder to find unfortunately, but here is a way which solved my problem:
Open your terminal on your Mac and type in:
sudo killall coreaudiod
Press enter and you're done. It should work now.
Hope this helps.


HTML5 section headers

Question: I have gotten myself rather confused. In HTML5 its best to include headings for each section for screen readers and alike, then hide the ones you don't want to display. My question is, what heading number is best to use. Do you use the flow as you normally would, or can you just use anything like always h6, or h1 etc? The reason I ask, is if you are hiding them, surely you could end up missing out heading tags in the flow.
Answer: The outline algorithm changed for HTML5, it makes it possible to have a whole stack of "h1-h6" per sectioning element. For more information, read that excellent article on HTML5 Doctor: http://html5doctor.com/outlines/

HTML5 section headers


How Much Say Would A Prospective Supervisor Have In A Students Admission To An Applied Math Graduate Program?

Question: I am interested in applying to some applied math graduate programs but I have some deficiencies in a few math courses. However, I have reached out to a potential supervisor and our conversations are going well. So my question is, if a prospective supervisor wants to take on a particular student, but students have to enter a common pool of applicants, how much influence on An individuals admissions does a prospective advisor have in the process.
Comment: In which country?
Comment: Canada/U.S is the context
Comment: Actually don't dwell on the past in the SoP. Make it forward looking.
Comment: Do you already have an MS in something? A BS in math? Other?
Comment: @Buffy I did some coursework in physics, got a minor in math, and ended up doing a BA in economics and will be defending for a MSc in Natural Resource Economics shortly. Two issues that exist are that 1) some of my math grades are sporadic (D in ODE's, A- in PDE's; why that's the case I can save for the Statement of Purpose) and 2) I am missing some components such as real analysis. Generally though the reason for sporadic undergraduate grades is a lack of consistent discipline and hard work (for whatever that's worth).
Answer: "Soft" influence
It's hard to judge how much soft influence a professor has. Every professor will have a different level of influence, and also a different approach in how they wield it. There is no way to answer this definitively. The most influential professors in departments that allow them to wield influence will have as much power as they want to choose students. Professors in other departments may have little to no influence at all.
"Hard" influence
In my experience, the more powerful control over admissions that professors have is money. For many programs, there are more qualified applicants than there are slots available for funding. That means that many qualified applicants miss the cut despite being qualified: there are simply too many other prospective students that either have better resumes or have a better fit to the program. However, the program still wants those students!
If a professor has resources to fund a student and offers to do so, that student can possibly skip the queue a bit, because they are no longer competing for the at large funding slots. In the grad program I attended, these students were referred to as "direct admit" students: they joined a lab immediately that offered to support them. Other students had a year to rotate and choose a supervisor.
Summary
I have no idea which of these categories your program and professor is more likely to fall into, if either. If you want to be a student, apply. It's better to apply and fail to be accepted than to not apply and guarantee you will not be accepted.
Answer: The answer to this question depends a lot on the university and the seniority of the prospective supervisor. I did not apply for a Math program but for computer science and though the prospective supervisor was keen the committee rejected my application. I believe there should not be a huge difference in the Math department.
Academia is ripe with politics and resources are limited. So there is never going to be one answer to this question. The influence of the prospective supervisor depends a lot on how good a politician he is. And that will determine how good he is in getting his prospective students into the programme. If the supervisor is junior then his senior colleagues will dictate terms. I have known prospective supervisors to write a personal note of recommendation for some students on the application who they think are more suited to work 'for' them.
In an ideal world, the supervisor should not be a member of the committee which shortlists the application. But even then I have seen senior academicians ensuring their colleagues who are close to them professionally being put into the committee to ensure they get what they want and vice versa.
If I were a prospective student I would care little about all this as none of this is in my hands.
Comment: I don't mind being downvoted but just curious on on knowing reason(s).


Error on Laravel Dusk Facebook\WebDriver\Exception\SessionNotCreatedException: session not created: Chrome version must be between 70 and 73

Question: Error when trying to run php artisan dusk. A Chrome version error happened. I Google the error and took a quick look in a couple of websites including Laracasts and the Dusk Github issues.
Answer: Solved after running php artisan dusk:chrome-driver
Comment: Upvote! Thank you! I've spent the best part of half an hour on this, you're a life saver, thank you.
Comment: Did it for me too! I'd make this the accepted answer.
Comment: Not all heroes wear capes. I bow before you.
Answer: Hopefully this helps someone else.
I found that my issue was:
Facebook\WebDriver\Exception\SessionNotCreatedException: session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 84

The Fix
I found the fix here https://barryvanveen.nl/blog/61-how-to-fix-common-laravel-dusk-problems
First run:
chromium-browser --version

Then after you find out your version from that run:
php artisan dusk:chrome-driver yourversion

Hope this helps someone else, as I was looking for an answer for a couple hours.
Answer: Solved after running the below command
php artisan dusk:chrome-driver --detect

Note: If you get the below error after running the above command
Failed to connect to localhost port 9515: Connection refused

then, restart your chrome browser and check it. It will solve that error. Hope it helps
Answer: For anyone running into this issue on Chrome/Chromium versions after 114, this is likely caused by Google changing the upstream URLs.
This seems to have been fixed in this Dusk issue here, so theoretically all that's needed to fix this properly is a composer require laravel/dusk --with-all-dependencies, but at least in my case, this would update a lot of dependencies and seems highly likely to break my application. I've asked on that issue what the best course of action is for a legacy Laravel application (Laravel 8 in my case), but in the meantime downgrading both the Chrome/Chromium browser and the Chrome driver to v114 should be a good enough workaround.
This is easier said than done and it's taken me over a day to figure out how to do it successfully on GitHub Actions, but adding the following step to your workflow file should be all you need to get your builds running again:
  - name: Downgrade Chrome browser to v114
    uses: browser-actions/setup-chrome@v1
    with:
      chrome-version: 1134343 # Last commit number for Chrome v114
    id: setup-chrome
  - run: sudo ln -fs ${{ steps.setup-chrome.outputs.chrome-path }} /usr/bin/google-chrome
  - name: Downgrade Chrome driver to v114
    run: php artisan dusk:chrome-driver `/usr/bin/google-chrome --version | cut -d " " -f3 | cut -d "." -f1`


Does BTCE API have a fast ticker?

Question: I think the title is pretty self explanatory. I know that MtGox has a fast ticker, so I was just wondering if BTCE had a similar function.
Thanks,
Paul
Answer: If you mean a ticker that is constantly up to date then yes. See here .
 As far as a way for pulling that data here is a php example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21021266/parsing-json-data-from-a-remote-server

Does BTCE API have a fast ticker?


Undo patch in IDA

Question: While I'm doing a patching using IDA, I accidentally patch wrong bites and I can't remember what bytes were there before. Is there a way to undo it..?
Answer: There is a window to see all patched bytes, along with their unpatched versions: in the menu, use View / Open Subviews / Patched Bytes, or press STRG-ALT-P.
This is for IDA 6.8 (newest version), i don't know if older versions have the same thing.
However, i recommend you to install the ida patcher plugin, which improves working with patches greatly; for example, you can copy/paste a patch from somewhere else; you can fill a region with identical bytes, and there is a window that's similar to the standard patcher window, but lets you assign comments to patches, and revert them with a single click to the context menu.
Comment: I'm using a older version. So I think I can't undo it. I will try ida patcher plugin. Thanks for your help..
Answer: Go to View / Open Subviews / Patched Bytes, where patches are.
Right click on a line and click "Revert" . This works in Ida 6.8
Answer: I don't know how you could unpatch them, since I think there is no way to do that(I'm talking about IDA 6.5, which I use).
But I would recommend you for future to use Database Snapshots in IDA. It's very convenient - you can save the state of all your bytes, function names, comments and so on. If something went wrong you can just restore a snapshot in snapshot manager.
You can find the it in View --> Database Snapshot Manager in IDA Pro 6.5
Comment: Database Snapshot will be a good idea. Thank you for your help..
Answer: An alternative solution, for older IDA versions:
Use File>Produce file>Create DIF file... to dump all the changes.
File format is Offset: Old New for every patched byte in file.
Find the bytes you want to change back, and do it manually.
Just remember that offsets are from file start, they are not memory addresses.

Undo patch in IDA