Do triplets always have a 3 written on top?

Question: I was told by my teacher that a triplet will always have a three written on top. I've also seen this in theory books for graded exams which have also said that any triplet grouping will have a bracket around it. And I've read in other places that any tuplet will have a bracket over it.
But I'm playing Moonlight Sonata at the moment in which there are no brackets or 3's written. I wonder if it's for the clarity on the page given that the triplets play all the way through. Would appreciate any feedback.
Do some versions of Moonlight Sonata have the three written? And is it actually quite common for pieces with triplets to not have the 3 written?
Comment: I haven't used this before so wasn't sure how to respond best to all the answers. Thank you everybody who has responded, it's been very helpful and pretty much along the lines of what I suspected.  Thank you.
Comment: You can respond best by upvoting any answers that you find useful, and by accepting the one you found most useful (the green tick).
Answer: Yes, in theory exams give all your triplets a number and a bracket.
And yes, in 'real music' when a triplet figure becomes established it's common to omit the '3' after a few repetitions, or even from the outset.   And 'Moonlight' is probably the most-quoted example of this happening!
Moving into the Romantic era it became quite common for (piano in particular) composers to write 'impossible' rhythms, sometimes using small noteheads 'quasi cadenza' but very often not.   It is generally easy to see what is intended, both on a 'fit these notes against these notes' basis and with the knowledge that the performance was intended to be flexibly rubato, not strictly metronomic.  (Though it's often interesting to see what happens if the beat IS rather less flexible...)
Later still, composers started writing complex tuplets that (I think) ARE intended to be played with precise rhythmic accuracy.
It's all about context.  And fashion.
Comment: Wait, Moonlight Sonata is not 12/8? Why?
Comment: @Džuris Beethoven wrote a melody using dotted rhythms, he overlaid an accompaniment in triplets.  He chose by far the most elegant and economical way to notate this!
Answer: Normally a triplet is marked with a '3' and a bracket, mostly on the stem side, but often on the notehead side. If the triplets continue for a long time and it's obvious where they are, some editions leave out the marks after the first couple of triplets. Very occasionally an edition will leave them out completely: in the 'Moonlight' Sonata it's very obvious they are triplets.
The bracket can be left out if the beaming makes it clear which notes belong to the triplet.
The same applies for any other kind of tuplet.
Comment: The Moonlight's first movement is also a rare example (within Beethoven's works at least) where the rhythmic motif is basically constant from beginning to end, so it's not necessary to mark the triples all the way through.
Comment: Note that prior to the late twentieth century, including all of the triplet markings in a piece like first movement of the Moonlight Sonata would added considerably to the amount of time required to engrave the printing plates.  Even if each triplet only took an engraver 7 seconds, engraving all of them would take about half an hour, and I suspect printing houses would prefer to spend their engravers' time on more useful endeavors.
Comment: @nuggethead In modern scoring programs it's easier to leave the marks in than take them out, but there's still a huge body of music that was engraved by hand.
Comment: Odd, this, because at least for Finale users it takes much longer to make that little number 3 disappear!
Answer: My edition (Assosiated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) gives only the first few triples with a 3 in brackets, knowing the following ones are obviously the same.  In such cases it would be pedantic to continue writing them out all the way through.
Answer: When reading older scores there are various ways to notate triplets: brackets, curved line, 3 in parenthesis. If memory serves, I've also seen old scores with groups of three eighth notes in simple, duple meter. I assume that lack of special tuplet notation meant performers understood to play them as triplets simply from the beam grouping. Also, the placement of the tuplet notation may be above or below the notes.
Answer: Like many things in notation, tuples are used to help make the notation clearer.  It is likely that the time signature of the music you're reading is  12/8.  Thus,the intended/implied subdivision of each bar (12 eighth notes) is four groups of three eighth notes.  In other words, the eighth notes are played at "face value" in 12/8, and so may appear without a tuple marking.
Contrast this to a case of 4/4 time, where the implied subdivision is 8 eighth notes per bar.  Three eighth notes would consume one and one-half beats at "face value," but when those three notes are beamed with a "3" tuple, this tells the reader that the three notes are to be played in the normal timespan of 2 notes, i.e., 3 eighth notes in one beat.
Conversely, in 12/8 time, you may sometimes see two eighth notes beamed with a "2" tuple, to indicate that those two eighths should occupy the time of three.
In general, one might think of it in terms of what is the rule and what is the exception.  In 12/8, it is generally the rule that 3 eighths form one (subdivided) beat, and so the rather redundant triplet notation is omitted.  Instead, the exceptional case of 2-to-the-beat eighths are marked with a "2" tuple.
In 4/4, the reverse is true: the conventional 2-to-the-beat eighth notes carry no tuple marking, and a "3" tuple is applied to triplets that are intended to be 3-to-the-beat.
Answer: Clarity in notation is not always achieved by being explicit.  If a score has triplets everywhere, then repeatedly writing a "3" everywhere just leads to clutter and annoyance.  The "Moonlight" Sonata is one such example.
Sometimes, the n-tuplets are implicit even when they aren't repeated.  For example, in the opening of Rachminoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, there are sometimes 8 notes to a beat, sometimes 9, but they are all written to look like eighth notes, even though sixteenth notes would be a better representation.  You just figure out, based on context, how to squeeze the required number of notes into the allotted time.
Answer: No not all scores have it indicated with a three. Some have it indicated with a three some do not. Some use a bow. Some use a bracket some scores have no indication of triplets at all and just have three quavers in a crotchet beat that you assume are triplets.
Ultimately, the score will be notated the way the composer and publishers want it to be notated.
Although there is a tradition of what is good notation composers can and often do disregard many things that are consider "good" or "proper" with just about anything they want.
Answer: Whether to place a "3" and a bracket (or some other designation of the grouping) above or below a triplet was a decision made by the composer (in the manuscript) or by the editor (in printed music).
In the case of the "Moonlight" sonata, other elements of the notation make it clear that the eighth notes are triplets. These include
(1) the beaming of the eighth notes in consistent groups of three and
(2) the combination of the alla breve time signature (so-called "cut time") with measures containing twelve eighth notes (or, for that matter, three eighth notes per beat, since the vertical line-up of the notes in all voices should follow the meter: all notes that begin on beat 1 should be lined up and likewise for all the beats and their subdivisions.
You can view Beethoven's own manuscript here:
https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/0/07/IMSLP51037-PMLP01458-Op.27-2_Manuscript.pdf
Be aware, though, that the first page of the manuscript is missing from the pdf (if not also from the actual document). Anyway, you'll note that Beethoven doesn't write the "3" for the triplets, but it's clear from the beaming and the context that that's what he means.
We also find the triplets missing from the first edition from 1802 (https://s9.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/3/33/IMSLP51038-PMLP01458-Op.27-2.pdf).
For printers, two reasons for suppressing the "3" in cases like this were economic: to save ink as well as the expense and time of typesetting a "3" over each group of notes.
On the IMSLP site, you can view a number of editions that suppress the "3" as well as some in which the editor likely intervened so that the notation would appear formally correct. That decision may have also been dictated by the house style of the typesetter or publishing house.
Keep in mind, too, that using the "3" throughout would make the page look terribly cluttered, and for no other reason than to be formally correct.
Answer: Sometimes it's clear from repeating notes that triplets are meant. I was looking at scores of Bach's famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor and some scores omit writing out the 3 above triplets, even when next to regular (duplet) note values.
Examples from IMSLP:
Johannes Ringk (ca. 1740-60):

Wilhelm Rust (1867):

Pierre Gouin (2007), now with the first 3 written out:
Answer: No.
I play rachmaninoff's second, and he doesn't even write triplet '3' when he doesn't write nonuplets, take a look at the first movement, first page, left hand. those broken chords / arpeggios are somewhere between 5-13 :-) and are meant to be played equally distributed under the long melody like a rolling wave
https://www.stretta-music.com/media/images/294/767294_detail-01.jpg


How do I change the value of the "To:" text field on the Message actuator?

Question: So I'm making an RTS type game, just for practice and exercise, but when I send someone somewhere, I want them to know when they need to stop. I decided this could be done by having the marker that they go to send them a message when they're near it. How can I make the message send only to the guys that are within, say, 3BU from it?
Answer: You need logic set up like in the image below on each of your markers.

It is just an Always sensor, set to True level triggering; and a Near sensor. Those two are plugged in to the python controller, which will activate the message actuator. The property in the Near sensor is not needed, that is only to limit what objects get the message.
The script will send a message to every object that is near (3 units or closer) the marker.
import bge

cont = bge.logic.getCurrentController()

list = cont.sensors['Near'].hitObjectList

if cont.sensors['Near'].triggered:
    message = cont.actuators['Message']
    for obj in list:
        message.propName = obj.name
        cont.activate(message)

The script gets all the objects that are near the marker and stores it as the list variable (line 5).
The if statement works like this, when anything is near the marker, the near sensor is triggered, thus it is True.
It then loops through the list of objects that are near, and sets the message actuator's "To:" field to one of the objects. (message.propName = obj.name)
The last line still part of the loop, activates the actuator - sends the message.
Comment: with two monkeys, your system doesn't work. one of them stops moving but the other keeps spinning around the marker.
Answer: I do not recommend to use the "To:" parameter at all. It creates a direct dependency to a single object.
One of the biggest advantages of messages is that you do not get such a dependency. Beside of that you couple the actuator to a single object which is contradictory to your requirement to interact with multiple objects.
Suggestion
I suggest to use a different architecture.

Identify the objects within range
Set according properties of the identified objects.
Objects with that property sense if the property value changed

1) Can be done with a near sensor. It serves several purposes. You set up the detection range, you set up the property name (A) and it senses the objects within that range.
2) Can be done with a Python controller. Due to its dynamic nature there are no sufficient build-in logic bricks. Python controllers do not have additional configuration parameters. So we can use a little trick to setup the value we want to send without hard-coding it. We use a connected message actuator and setup the value of the subject field (B) [The actuator will not be activated]. This looks pretty similar to your proposed idea.

The code retrieves the found objects and sets the property value for each of them:
notifier.py
import bge

def subjectToNotification():
    hitObjects = getHitObjects()
    if not hitObjects:
        return

    property = getPropertyName()
    value = getPropertyValue()

    for hitObject in hitObjects:
        hitObject[property] = value

While this describes the basic operation we want to achieve, it misses some details. You can use your own flexible implementations of the details. Just in case you have no plan, here is a simple implementation to be appended to notifier.py:
def getHitObjects():
    sensors = bge.logic.getCurrentController().sensors
    sensor = sensors[0]
    return sensor.hitObjectList

def getPropertyName(): # (A) and (C)
    sensors = bge.logic.getCurrentController().sensors
    sensor = sensors[0]
    return sensor.propName

def getPropertyValue(): # (B)
    actuators = bge.logic.getCurrentController().actuators
    actuator = actuators[0]
    return actuator.subject

3) The sensed objects need to check if they are sensed. As we know the property value gets set, we can use a property sensor to check the property (C). Example:

Be aware this will not detect subsequent notifications of the same value. If you need it that way you should explicitly reset the property after it changed.

I hope it helps
PS: With the above implementation (A) and (C) should have the same property name.


Find explicit formula for summation for p>0

Question: Find explicit formula for summation for any $p>0$:
$$\sum_{k=1}^n(-1)^kk\binom{n}{k}p^k.$$
Any ideas how to do that? I can't figure out how to bite it. I appreciate any help.
Comment: Look at $(1+x)^n=\sum_{k=0}^{n}\binom{n}{k}x^k$ and differentiate both sides.
Comment: Hint. Note that $k\binom{n}{k}=n\binom{n-1}{k-1}$ for $1\leq k\leq n$
Comment: combine the alternating part and p exponentiated part and you will get something that looks like the binomial theorem. Maybe you can combine the coefficient of k into the binomial coefficient, aka the combination function?
Comment: Can you give me another hint? I still don't see what to do next after this step.
Answer: Welcome to MSE!
Normally I would flag this as a duplicate, since I'm sure it's been asked before, but approach0 is down right now and some googling around hasn't actually brought it up...
We know from the binomial theorem that
$$\sum_{k=0}^n \binom{n}{k} x^k = (1+x)^n.$$
Differentiating both sides, we find
$$\sum_{k=1}^n k \binom{n}{k} x^{k-1} = n(1+x)^{n-1}$$
If we multiply both sides by $x$ and evaluate at $x = -p$, we find
$$\sum_{k=1}^n k \binom{n}{k} (-p)^k = (-p)n(1-p)^{n-1}$$

I hope this helps ^_^
Answer:
We obtain
\begin{align*}
\color{blue}{\sum_{k=1}^n}&\color{blue}{(-1)^kk\binom{n}{k}p^k}\\
&=n\sum_{k=1}^n(-1)^k\binom{n-1}{k-1}p^k\tag{1}\\
&=n\sum_{k=0}^{n-1}(-1)^{k+1}\binom{n-1}{k}p^{k+1}\tag{2}\\
&\,\,\color{blue}{=-np(1-p)^{n-1}}\tag{3}
\end{align*}
Comment:

In (1) we use the binomial identity $\binom{p}{q}=\frac{p}{q}\binom{p-1}{q-1}$.

In (2) we shift the index to start with $k=0$.

In (3) we factor out $-p$ and apply the binomial theorem.
Answer: \begin{align}
(1-x)^n &= \sum_{k=0}^n \binom{n}{k} (-x)^k
\\
-n(1-x)^{n-1} &= -\sum_{k=1}^n \binom{n}{k} k (-x)^{k-1}
& \text{differentiate w.r.t. $x$}
\\
-nx(1-x)^{n-1} &= \sum_{k=1}^n \binom{n}{k} k (-x)^k
& \text{multiply by $x$}
\end{align}


Moving Encrypted Folders

Question: How can i move Encrypted folder(everything) to new Disk, my HDD that has Linux is about to blow, its so slow.
So I bought SSD but, how can i move encrypted folders because my Linux folders are encrypted.
I have tried Searching Info but no luck, I have tried everything I know.
I'm trying to move the whole Linux to different Partition.
Answer: You used the word folder, which makes you might be talking about an encrypted /home folder. If that's the case, here's a really good answer.
How do I move my encrypted /home to a new computer?
If you're talking about moving an entire LVM, maybe this discussion will help.
How to migrate an encrypted LVM install to a new disk
Good luck.

Moving Encrypted Folders


Apple Music/iTunes

Question: I have 2 separate Apple IDs - one for personal and personal devices. Then I have another separate Apple ID and iPad device for the business that other employees can access as well. How can I log in to ONLY the Apple Music app on the iPad to use in the store?
Answer: The Apple Music component of iCloud is tied in to the main AppleID signed into the device. So firstly sign in to the device in the Settings app with the AppleID that you want to use the for Apple Music.
Still in Settings, go to the iCloud section and turn off all iCloud services that you dont need e.g. Photos, Mail etc.
You will probably want to increase the security so no changes can be made to the account without a passcode.
Then go to the App Store app, tap Featured and scroll to the bottom. Tap on AppleID, then Sign Out.
Then Sign In with the business AppleID and you will be able to install all the apps associated with that AppleID.
If this is inappropriate then it sounds like playing Apple Music directly off the device may not be a good solution. There are many options for playing back music from a local server e.g. the Synology NAS allows using a free app DSMusic for playing music from a library stored on the NAS.

Apple Music/iTunes


What would the industrial age be like without oil and coal?

Question: Consider a civilization with the industrial age technologies. Oil and coal are rare (probably used up). All products produced by oil and coal are also nonexistent. The civilization has invented electricity and has a renewable form to produce it (for example, through a hydroelectric power station). What will be different in that world?
Comment: Maybe have a look at earlier questions like : http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/27330/1600s-without-fossil-fuels-where-would-they-be-now
Or:
http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/9664/how-would-humans-have-developed-without-fossil-fuels
Comment: The environment would be a lot cleaner
Comment: I doubt that speculative questions like this one can ever be answered as [tag:hard-science].
Answer: Humans rarely take "no" for an answer, so you will see an industrial civilization rooted in the Elizabethan era.
That is correct; a proto industrial civilization already existed in the 1500's, powered by wood, and to a lesser extent vegetable and whale oils. Wood could be harnessed directly for heat by burning, but to make metals it was normally converted to charcoal in order to ensure a more uniform heat output (a similar process is used to turn coal into coke for making steel). In fact, one of the drivers behind the ndustrial Revolution in England was the crisis of "peak wood" in the 1700's which forced the switchover to coal...
Wood burning would become much more sophisticated, and the sorts of high tech wood burning stoves which became popular in the 1980's (including wood pellet designs, slow combustion etc) would have been developed far earlier in order to maximize the heating power of wood. Clever chemists would also develop "wood gas", much like desperate drivers did during WWII

Indeed, clever chemists could use wood and alcohol fuels derived from plants to replicate much of what we have today, including chemicals, pharmaceuticals and plastics. Because the supply would be limited (and always in competition for other uses, see how corn prices spiked when much of the US crop was diverted to biofuels. This even caused food riots in parts of the world), so these things would be relatively rare and costly in tis world compared to our own.
This would also make farming and forestry far more important in this world compared to our own. A much larger percentage of the population would be living in the countryside farming and working in managed forests, since they would be vital to the production of the power needed to run the industrial civilization. Cities would be smaller and much less "mechanized", since the expense of fuelling mobile machinery would be much greater than today. Most factories would be like 19th century ones with large stationary engines at one end of the factory floor driving all the machines through a system of driveshafts and belts.
The last effect would also make your society have stark disparities in wealth, since productivity (unit output per hour worked) will be far lower in your society than in our own. In storytelling terms this would be mostly "steampunk", but the higher energy of wood gas and fuels condensed out of it might make some dieselpunk technology possible as well.
Answer: In RL during early phase of industrial revolution railways had a serious competitor: barges traveling on channels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_canal_system#The_Industrial_Revolution
(It is quite easy to imagine a world where they would develop further)
In RL the early phase of industrial revolution involved weaving machines, some of which did not use any steam power. Like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_frame
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_jenny
(So industrial revolution would be able to start anyway, in early phase the difference would be barely noticeable)
Wind power for sea transport was not so bad, even in the '30s of XXth century there was still market for big cargo sail ships:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windjammer
(so passanger and military transport is hit by lack of coal, while sea cargo transport barely notice lack of fossils)
Needless to say, with lack of fossils, there would be a tendency to replace sail ships by ships with nuclear propulsion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah
(as you see in RL they were tried but were too expensive in comparison with ships that used oil)
Railways would presumably start later, as they would require cheap electricity from nuclear energy. Nevertheless, then they would be highly succesful as any car fuel would be quite expensive.
Answer: For a long time humanity used whale fat for fuel. Granted, it is an oil, but not the one you were probably thinking about (petrol oil). Entire economies formed around it. Your world wouldn't be very ceacean friendly, if you connect the dots...
A videogame called Dishonored is an example of a fictional world powered by whale fat. It is a steampunk world and while there is magic, most electrical things like radios and lights use regular electricity from whale fat combustion-powered generators.
Answer: The answer to this question can go a long way since the world would look drastically different from our, so I'll keep it short and simple.
By taking away oil and coal you're taking away a HUGE chunk of our civilization. As of right now, 70% of the steel produced today uses coal, as well as 41% of global electricity(keep in mind the atomic electro stations) - info from World Coal Association. And this is the situation today. After we've spent tons of time improving production and coming up with alternatives.
If we are so dependent on coal for production now, what were the chances of people of the past? Even if they have electricity, even if they use tons of wood, they won't be able to smelt the same amounts of metal, as the coal-world counterpart.
And what we get in the end? Metal is expensive. Machines are rare. Complex technology is reserved for the wealthy. Progress is slow, due to everything listed above.
Answer: When it comes to industrialisation, the importance of coal cannot be overstated.  The reason the industrial revolution happened in England was of course, partly political, but it would have been impossible without substantial coal reserves.
Let's begin by looking at the below map.  Little wonder that lowland Scotland, Wales, and the north of England became centres of industry.  Importantly, much of the coal here was easily accessible and didn't require deep mines.

Referring to official UK government records, British coal production peaked around 1910, with an output of about 260 million tonnes, employing 900,000 workers.  The records begin in the 1850s, with coal production estimated at 70 million tonnes.
The problem in saying, well couldn't we just use alternatives, is that the industrial revolution wasn't just coal and oil.  It nearly led to the extinction of whales, and the complete deforestation of some countries.
By the time the Romans arrived in Britain it is estimated that half of native forests had gone, partly owing to climate change, but mostly owing to human activity.  The situation deteriorated until in 1919, after the First World War, Britain had almost run out of timber.  The government then created The Forestry Commission in order to protect what was left and regenerate woodland.
Whale oil was used until the resource was depleted.  The industry peaked by 1859, as the petroleum industry was born.  It is estimated that about three million whales were slaughtered during the last century, and as you can see from the below graph, whale numbers could not sustain the industry for any longer than they had.
Without coal and oil, whale oil and wood are the obvious supplements, but they would have been exhausted long before present day in this scenario because demand would have soared early on.  Indeed coal is still essential for our contemporary energy needs.  The USA is the second largest coal producer and consumer, and in 2012 produced 935 million tonnes.  A 2015 report by the IEA summarised that world energy supply has doubled between 1973 and 2013.  In 1973 coal provided 24%, oil 46%, and natural gas 16%.  Come 2013 coal had risen to 28%, oil fell to 31%, and natural gas rose to 21%.
Given the enormous numbers involved when it comes to coal and oil, an industrial revolution without either would have been brief, and quite possibly led to the extinction of whales and deforestation of much of the world.  The world might have faced an Easter Island like situation, where deforestation led to soil erosion, implosion of food supplies, and a sharp social collapse as the population corrected to a much lower number after mass starvation and violence.
Answer: Petroleum based products do a lot more than just produce electricity. They are essential in plastics, cosmetics, and various household items. If electricity is plentiful, you could supply heat and cooking through those method. Cars will be significantly more limited --and expensive-- as EV advancements are recent due to battery advancement.
Shipping and Flying Vehicles will not be powered. Unfortunately, up until very recently it was near impossible for either of these things to be feasible with electric batteries, and since hot air balloons require kerosene/other similar fuel, then they won't exist either. Your one option is helium balloons.These can propelled through some other sort of solid rocket propellant. Therefore sail ships with limited electric motors for maneuvering will likely dominate commerce. Electric trains are quite common, but infrastructure needs to be set up ahead of time, so they likely won't have any in wild-west type areas.
Answer: Think of what would happen if this were true on our own planet.
No large shipping vessels, so limited trade between countries. Travel between countries would be limited (sailing vessels); no airplanes or ocean liners, etc.
Agriculture would be more difficult, and food would be much more limited due to transportation difficulties.
People would walk a lot; use bicycles more, or small electric vehicles. People would probably be healthier (no air pollution, etc.), wildlife would be healthier as well, the lack of large scale fishing would mean sea creatures of all kinds would be able to rebound.
Suburban sprawl would be limited unless solar, wind and other renewable sources were used. People would tend to live where electricity could be produced and distributed. There would be a lot more people "off the grid".
No oil-rich countries would cut down some on the great disparity of wealth and wars.
Wars would be limited to gunpowder, no missiles, etc.
It would affect cultures profoundly.


"Very" multiple times

Question: Can "very" be used as a multiplier? For instance: A house, a big house, a very big house, a very very big house meaning a bigger house than a very big house and so on.
Answer: You could use 'very' to give an indication about its comparative size to an average house, but as mentioned by @Mazz, this becomes boring really quickly if you're trying to write something you want people to read.
Using other adverbs as proposed by Mazz is an option, however it's better to use another adjective all together for readability and a more engaging text.
Smaller house: The tiny house (Instead of 'the very small house')
Small house: The small house
Normal house: The house
big house: The big house
bigger house: The huge house (instead of 'the very large house')
I hope this example helps you to deal with the use of 'very' and perhaps offers you some alternatives on what words to use instead of it. This is applicable for many adjectives, especially those that indicate size or some order of magnitude as with your house example provided in the question.
Comment: True you could theoretically go infinitely far that way, but the thing is that there is a certain limit as to what is realistic and when you mention something like: 'Charly's eyes became big as dishes as he approached the collosal house in front of him. never in his life had he seen a mansion as large as this one.' At some point you have to trust the reader to be able to imagine what you're trying to convey.
Comment: How far can you go this way? I mean: A house, A big house, A bigger house, A huge house, A huger house, An extremely big house, An extremely bigger house, An enormously big house, An enormously huge house, An extremely huge house, An extremely enormous gigantic house, An extremely huger ginormous house. I think this doesn't have an end? Am I looking at it the right way?
Comment: Russians have a good imagination )))
Answer: You can certainly do that, but be warned that it would be received as a very informal style of speech.  One might say that the number of "very"s you place in front of a word will also modify the informality of the sentence.  :)
If you don't want to change the adjective, as Hyfnae suggested (quite sensibly), you could also amplify the implied size by choosing a word that has a larger impact than "very", e.g.:

"It was a very large house."
"It was a remarkably large house."
"It was a terrifically large house."
"It was a strikingly large house."
"It was an extremely large house."
"It was an exceedingly large house."
"It was an unbelievably large house."
"It was an inordinately large house."
"It was an astronomically large house."

This would also allow you to imply more than just the size, as many of these words carry extra meanings, e.g. "inordinately" indicates not just that it's very large, but also that the speaker considers it to be too large.
You could also reduce the impact a little, while still increasing the impact vs. just saying it was a large house:

"It was an unusually large house."
"It was quite a large house."
Comment: I guess there doesn't exist a list of sizes?
Comment: @SovereignSun Not really.  English is a huge mishmash of other languages, formed over centuries.  There is very little order to rely on when it comes to adjectives and adverbs.  You simply need to learn, from context and dictionaries, what the various degrees and nuances are for each candidate word.  Some definitions vary a little from person to person as well, so it's best to choose one that you hear often and which seems well-understood by all.

"Very" multiple times


Did life evolve in Star Wars, or was it created by the Force?

Question: I was wondering how exactly life originated in the Star Wars universe. Did life arise through natural processes (eg. Darwinian evolution) like on earth, or did the Force somehow "create" life? Did something like theistic evolution happen where the Force guided the process? Did the Force have anything to do with the origin of life in Star Wars?
Comment: I disagree, @Gallifreian, he *is* asking one question, he's just asking it a few different ways to make sure he covers his bases.
Comment: "Where art thou, Darwin?"
Comment: great question, I've been looking into that myself and didn't find a satisfactory answer myself. The only thing we know for sure is that humans come from Coruscant and have been spreading through the galaxy for a long time with different means of transport.
Comment: Legends or Canon?
Comment: These are some great questions, but one of the main philosophies of this site is AFAIK *"one question - one answer"*; it means that you must ask a question that has a precise and objective answer. Try to edit your question to make it more precise, as per [help centre](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask).
Comment: I would prefer canon, unless this has only been established through legends.
Answer: The Force did not create life. In fact, life created the Force, so it would be impossible for the Force to have created life. (See clip- "It's an energy field created by all living things.") It is always possible that life, after creating the Force, was influenced by the Force, and so was shaped by its own creation, but life came first.

Most likely, life in the Star Wars universe actually arose several times. It seems unlikely that one form of life touched down on all the planets in the universe, then left each one alone to evolve in peace for millennia. It is much more probable that life evolved separately on each planet, eventually reaching out and contacting the other planets nearby, forming the interplanetary alliances and rivalries that we see in Star Wars. If this is the case, it is entirely possible that all of the different species in the universe run on different code, use different proteins, and may not even be "alive" as we humans think of it. A good follow-up question would be, "Do the creatures of Star Wars share DNA, or run on it at all?" Unfortunately, only George Lucas will actually have an answer, and even he might not have thought that far.
Answer: Life came into being well before The Force showed up. Obi-Wan made it clear that it was created by living beings. Having The Force being around before life does seems a little weird.
Comment: This adds nothing that is not already in the accepted answer.


Loading image vs full page post back?

Question: If I have a large table of data that when sorted take like 5-10 secs to sort, is it a better UX to just do a page post back or better to add a loading image and use ajax call?
Comment: You generally get better answers if you show what prior research you have done and what your use-case is as different contexts would result in different answers.  I.E. if your users are customers on an e-commerce site versus business analysts using a reporting interface 5-10 seconds can mean a world of difference.  As it stands now your question is incredibly broad and unqualified.
Answer: If time is actually around 5 seconds, having a circular (uncontrolled) gif would do but if the time is around 10 seconds, then you need a loading bar which show how much is done and how much is left.
BUT
Such a delay is poor UX as ajax has changed user's expectations and even when there is large data to load, user expects he would be shown some data straight-away and more will keep loading while he makes use of loaded one. So if it possible, provide loading in segments and don't make your user wait at all.
Comment: Ah, I see so paging may be a better option.

Loading image vs full page post back?


Upgrade Windows 7 Home Premium on laptop to Windows 7 Ultimate through MSDN

Question: Any issues with that?
Answer: Nope, shouldn't be any problems - MSDN gives you access to a full edition image.
That being said, remember the MSDN licence terms that it should only be used for development and/or testing.
Comment: It will be for development.  Getting Home Premium on a new laptop will save $150 when we already have an MSDN sub.
Comment: You can save even more - don't say before as they may refuse to sell to you, but when you get the laptop - ring up the company or shop you bought from and say you do not want the Windows licence / do not agree to the terms and conditions, they should give you a refund of around £50-£60 - and it is perfectly legal.
Answer: I can report that I successfully took advantage of the Windows Anytime upgrade (Vista Home to Vista Ultimate.)
It preserved the old settings.  All that I needed was the Product Key.
My point: technically upgrading from one Windows edition to another is easy.  As it happens, I used an MSDN product key for my test machine upgrade.  No problems.
All the hassles come from decyphering Microsoft's licencing rules.
Answer: I've successfully upgraded win 7 starter (OEM) to Ultimate using an MSDN key which was generated in August 09...
initially I just wanted to upgrade my notebook from starter to pro (I don't need bit locker and other ultimate features)... so i've generated a pro retail key on MSDN today... upgrade failed... kept telling me the key was invalid..
not sure if it's to do with the pro vs ultimate or when the key was generated...


Did Sai Sircu survive in Star Wars Clone Wars Jedi Alliance?

Question: The last we see of Sai Sircu, she exploded inside the warship Devastation. But it was never officially said that she was dead, and there are characters like Darth Maul who survived horrific deaths.
Answer: As of 2023, no sources have stated or implied that she survived exploding. In the cutscene from the game itself, she appears to explode into energy and tiny fragments:

(Source: "Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Jedi Alliance - DEVASTATION (FINAL)" on YouTube)
The official strategy guide to the game describes her demise as final:

Once she's sustained too much damage, Sai Sircu backs away and falls to her knees. The energy beam surrounds her and slowly lifts her into the air. The Force energy flows from her to the four surrounding crystals and quickly amplifies!
Suddenly, in a beam of light, Sai Sircu is joined with the Force... permanently.
(Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Jedi Alliance Prima Official Game Guide, page 59, via Internet Archive)

The only reference to her since then is a 2010 article in Star Wars Insider #122 about the Nightsisters, which only describes her role in the game:

In conjunction with The Clone Wars movie and TV series in 2008, LucasArts released Star Wars The Clone Wars: Jedi Alliance for the Nintendo DS focusing on a story that pits the Jedi against Nightsisters, led by Sai Sircu and Yansu Grjak, who ally themselves with Count Dooku. Ros Lai from "Infinity's End" appears in the game; her look was heavily influenced by the "Sith witch" concept art from The Phantom Menace.
(Star Wars Insider #122, "Everything You Always Wanted To Know About The Nightsisters But Were Afraid To Ask", via Internet Archive)

Since she only appeared in a single Legends work that hasn't been recanonized, it's very unlikely that future works will revisit or retcon her death.
Comment: People don't usually explode into tiny pieces *and survive*


What are my options for erosion control under this fence?

Question: I am looking at options for mitigating erosion under this fence area. It is also an easement area shared with us and the higher neighboring property. I need: 1. A simple and cost effective solution to reduce erosion at the fence line along the entire fence

The other side of the fence:

The other side of the fence:
Comment: A picture of the other side of wooden fence might help.
Comment: Does the slope continue on the other side of the fence?  And who does the fence belong to?
Comment: And which wall are you asking about?  The one along the bottom of the hill, or the one that's partially built next to the fence?  If it's the latter, then it's really not a retaining wall, at least IMHO.
Comment: Really trying to work out what options we have here to work with.....aesthetically and practically. The areas on both sides of the fence are a utilities easement, and I am not clear who the fence belongs to.  That is likely an important factor to ascertain!
Comment: You may consider talking to the utility company and/or a property lawyer to find out what rights you may have to make any modifications within the easement. Your best bet for erosion control probably planting low ground cover, and providing somewhere controlled for the water to go should it flood.
Answer: Stating the obvious. Grass. Other than that you have all dirt. Wind and water will continue the erosion. Grass seed is cheap. Try hay, if it is not windy in your area,bales of hay cost $12. You will need 3. Break them down and throw seed in, let weeds and grass grow.
Answer: Assume the fence posts are erected properly with adequate embedment length, the only thing you need to address is to avoid soil erosion or loss of surface soil due to weathering. I'll provide a 1' - 2' wide x 6" deep stone bench next to the fence, then buildup and smoother the slope with topsoil and populate it with vegetation, but no trees.


When must FAA reply to my letter?

Question: I have sent letters requesting action and/or clarifications to the FAA medical certifications branch.  How long can FAA legally delay before they are required to answer my questions in writing?
Comment: Are you a member of the AOPA? Are you doing this in response to a medical disqualification by your AME? What class medical is this for?
Comment: @RonBeyer I don't think any of that is relevant to the question. Is a government agency legally obliged to respond to a letter? I doubt it, though the FAA Administrator might not like hearing that his staff are ignoring people.
Comment: @Ben The AOPA has resources to help for members in this situation. If it is in response to a disqualification by an AME, he would have a reference number and a case file started, if he is just sending letters without a reference number, they will probably not respond. If this is for a first class medical for an airline, the airline may have resources to help. So yes, I believe the questions I asked are relevant. The FAA gets 1800+ medical inquiries per day, so unless he has some case file, he may be ignored just based on volume and cases that have references.
Comment: I don't know what you're concern is about, but they are in the middle of a big rule change on 3rd class medical certifications. As far as I've heard they haven't finalized the rules yet. They were given 1 year from July 15th, 2016 to flesh out all the details
Answer: The FAA publication "MEDICAL FACTS FOR PILOTS" Publication #OK-06-002 states the time periods shown below. I don't know of any rule that mandates a response in any specific time period.
We will respond to your request for duplicate medical certificates within 3 working days of receipt.
We will respond to your request for full review of medical records within 30 working days of receipt of all the necessary records and testing.

When must FAA reply to my letter?


How to reduce fretting hand fatigue?

Question: I have played guitar for a while now and have been doing quite good. I can played E and A shaped barre chords without any problem. I can also play barre chord in CAGED system. My problem is that my hand starts to pain just after 8-10 seconds of barre playing. I have adjusted the strength and hand position but without any use. Any advice or my hand just isn't made for barre playing?
Answer: This sounds like a possible tension problem. Those hands should relax, tension build ups in your hands are one of the main reasons for discomfort in guitar playing.
Focus on building the muscle memory so that your hands can lock properly, you also have to learn how to use the minimum of force to hold those barres down. This all ties in with the economy of motion. When you start playing extended sessions it becomes important.
If you learn that you really have to force those strings down with a lot of force, then maybe your guitar has a too high action or some other intonation problem.
Answer: There are many reasons why it's a problem, and maybe several come together in your circumstances.

the barres are being held too firmly.
your thumb is not central on the neck back.
the angle of the neck needs changing, between horizontal and vertical.
rotate the neck away from you, clockwise.
the neck profile is too deep for your hand.
the fingerboard radius doesn't suit.
the action is too high.
the strings are very tight, due to being heavy gauge.
you wear the guitar too high/low (more likely the latter).
your hand just isn't made for barre playing. Just kidding!

How to reduce fretting hand fatigue?


How to mount CIFS shares in Linux without password, using domain credentials?

Question: I have Ubuntu 18.04 and CentOS 7 boxes, they are members of Windows domain (using sssd).
Linux users need to mount CIFS shares from domains fileservers. What should be done in order to provide passwordless mount, using Kerberos?
(I see a similar question, unfortunately without accepted answer Ubuntu map CIFS / SMB share using active domain credentials without password file)
Answer: Done, using pam_mount (Ubuntu18.04, part of MS Windows domain based on sssd):

apt install keyutils libpam-mount
Added to /etc/security/pam_mount.conf.xml


Female supervising men in Factory

Question: My wife is planning to establish a pure water factory. In the Factory 75% of the workers will be men, while she supervise/manage them. What is the ruling regarding these issue.Kindly site references for me to buttress the position, please.
If the the ruling is against it, kindly give us examples of  businesess allowed for women to participate in.
Jazakalla khair!
Comment: Salam and welcome to Islam.SE, this is not a fatwa site and most of the answerers are not scholars or sheikhs that you are looking for. Take a look at [this link](http://islam.stackexchange.com/about) to know what is going on here.
Answer: There is nothing in Islam that prevents a woman to supervise men working under her. Remember that the Prophet himself worked for a woman, Khadeeja, who would later become his wife.
Another reported case that came later was that the caliph Omar ibn Al-Khattab appointed a woman as the supervisor of the local market.
Comment: That was pre-islamic though. A big difference. After Islam, there isn't a single case where a women lead?

Female supervising men in Factory


what happens if a usb is re-connected too many times?

Question: I read somewhere that USB and eSata have limits to how many "pairing" is can have. does this mean if it's ejected and re-inserted into the slot more than 1500 times it will just stop working? or does that mean x number of devices?
Answer: What that means is the materials the cable and the socket the cable connects do can be inserted and removed 1500 times on average before something "bad" happens that makes it stop working.
What is "bad" could be anything, it could be the plastic cracks, it could be the metal contacts wear out, it could be the solder inside the cable breaks free from its contacts, anything! The important thing is ON AVERAGE (it's not like there is some counter inside where it works on the 1499th time but it shuts it off on the 1500th time) you should be able to plug and unplug the cable 1500 times before one of those things happen.
Also note that the specifications are minimum numbers. If someone wants to make a device that can handle 10000 pairings that is fine, it is just they can not make a device that handles under 1500 parings and still legally be allowed to use the USB logo () on their products..
Comment: @ZCoder also those number are very high, if you plugged in and unplugged your device once a day every day and **never skipping a day** it would take about 4 years 1 month before you would hit 1500.
Comment: One other thing I should also have stressed, 1500 is the **minimum** value. Manufactures are free to make their products much stronger, but they are not allowed to call their product USB if it is below 1500. Things that are very frequently plugged in and removed may be made from higher grade materials (like better quality USB memory sticks).
Comment: ok. I was concerned as even though the numbers look high at a glance, there are some USB devices which I casually connect and disconnect from my PC as needed, and the number of times that happens adds up after a while.


Aristotle, Categories, κινητόν

Question: In Aristotle, to what category does the κινητόν belong?
Comment: Can you say more? Where have you looked? What have you tried?
Answer: As this is about "movement", the motion, more precisely the outcome of it, may fall under any category, as I understand:

Again, there is no such thing as motion over and above the things. It is always with respect to substance or to quantity or to quality or to place that what changes changes. But it is impossible, as we assert, to find anything common to these which is neither 'this' nor quantum nor quale nor any of the other predicates. Hence neither will motion and change have reference to something over and above the things mentioned, for there is nothing over and above them. (Physics III.1)

Movement is to be understood as causation as such, moving the substance in different ways causing a change of accidents falling under the categories. At least this is my best shot of what is left of Aristotle in my mind. Therefore God as the unmoved mover must be thought as the beginning of every single causal chain of events, bringing the substance of things into motion:

Moreover, the conclusion to which we have been led is a reasonable one. For there must be three things-the moved, the movent, and the instrument of motion. Now the moved must be in motion, but it need not move anything else: the instrument of motion must both move something else and be itself in motion (for it changes together with the moved, with which it is in contact and continuous, as is clear in the case of things that move other things locally, in which case the two things must up to a certain point be in contact): and the movent-that is to say, that which causes motion in such a manner that it is not merely the instrument of motion-must be unmoved. Now we have visual experience of the last term in this series, namely that which has the capacity of being in motion, but does not contain a motive principle, and also of that which is in motion but is moved by itself and not by anything else: it is reasonable, therefore, not to say necessary, to suppose the existence of the third term also, that which causes motion but is itself unmoved. So, too, Anaxagoras is right when he says that Mind is impassive and unmixed, since he makes it the principle of motion: for it could cause motion in this sense only by being itself unmoved, and have supreme control only by being unmixed. (Physics VIII.5)

This is very similar to what Kant writes in the thesis in the third antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason about transcendental freedom, by the way.
Movability in this narrow sense (kineaton) could be then attributed to anything but the free, but generally only to substances.

Aristotle, Categories, κινητόν


how to convert a case-insensitive FS to case-sensitive on MacOS X 10.6.1

Question: I have a Snow Leopard with a case-insensitive file system.  I wonder is there a way to convert the FS to case-sensitive without having to format and then reinstall the whole OS.  In Linux there are utils like parted that enable to change the partition FS (at least ext2 to ext3 for one), is there something similar for Mac OS X.  I mean that case-sensitivity seems to be a small option to change, does it absolutely require a format+reinstall of hd?
Answer: I haven't used it, but iPartition claims to be able to convert in-place between case-sentitive and case-insensitive HFS+ formats.
Comment: I bought iPartition for this exact purpose, and converted a terabyte filesystem to case sensitive in a couple of minutes.  Well worth it.
Answer: This can't be done unless you reinitialize the volume in question.
Answer: What might work is if you create an image of your installed system (with Disk Utility or Carbon Copy Cloner) and then restore this to a case-sensitive file system.
Be careful, though, as switching to a case-sensitive FS might have some strange issues with programs not really tested for this.
Comment: Doesn't restoring an image set the case-sensitivity and journalling?
Comment: At least CCC should be able to use the given (case-sensitive) filesystem, as it basically uses rsync as long as you don't tell it to do a block-level restore. I haven't tested this though, so beware.


do the voltage and amperage applied to a motor matter as long as the wattage stays at what its rated for?

Question: I have an electric 180w motor from an electric go cart which currently runs on lead acid batteries but I want to convert it to have a 18650 battery pack for a power supply but I cant find the rated voltage and amperage for the motor I only know that it runs at 180w so can I use whatever voltage and amperage I to power it as long as it is running on 180w?
Comment: NO The temperature rise is proportional to I² not I
Comment: Exceeding the design voltage will eventually cause insulation breakdown or other arcing, exceeding the design current will eventually burn out some wire, exceeding the design power (wattage) will eventually overheat the motor.  The idea is to work within the safe range that the motor was designed for and not look for the extreme limits.
Comment: Golf cart means it's probably 12V. Maybe 24. And to answer your question, it does matter.
Answer: Yes, the voltage and amperage do make a difference.
To start with the motor wants to spin at a speed proportional to voltage, so if the voltage is too high or too low the motor will either over-speed or not run fast enough. Over-speeding can produce excessive brush arcing and commutator wear, reduce bearing life, or even cause the armature to fly apart.
Secondly, 'copper' loss (caused by resistance of the winding wires) is proportional to current squared, so running higher current at lower voltage results in higher loss at the same input power. This is only partially compensated by the lower 'iron' loss (caused by hysteresis and eddy currents induced into the magnetic core) at lower rpm. If the motor has a built-in cooling fan it may also run hotter due to less airflow at the lower speed.
If the battery voltage is higher than the rated motor voltage then you can reduce top rpm by limiting the throttle to less than 100%, but the speed controller must still be able to handle the full motor current (which with a PWM controller will be higher than the battery current).
Bottom line is you should find out what voltage the motor is designed to run on. One way might to run it on eg. 12V and measure the rpm, then relate that to what rpm it ran at in the go cart.
Answer: If you apply 180W to the motor when it is almost stalled (ie too much mechanical load), it will melt the motor.
If you apply 180W with no load, the motor will spin so fast that it will damage the device.
180W only applies to the rated torque and rated speed, which has about half of the no load speed and half the 0 rpm torque.  I, too, was surprised when I learned that the rated values are for only one operating point of an infinite possible conditions.
Having said that, you could take a guess.  Find the holding current and halve it.  Then solve 180W = V * I, using this halved value of current, and that is your maximum voltage... The rated voltage.  Then you may want to add a 25% factor of safety (ie apply less voltage).
But if you are using this for anything else than a hobby, do find out the true rated values.


Table design

Question: I was wondering is this a good design, assuming the tables as follows
ADDRESS(id, address, city_fk, stateFK, countryFK),
CITY(id, name, stateFK, countryFK),
STATE(id, name, countryFK),
COUNTRY(id, name)

Notice how country fk is repeated in 3 tables? and state fk repeated in 2 tables?  Can anyone tell me if this is a good design?  If so, why?  Coz I dont see the need to repeat it every so often.
Cheers
Comment: what does FK stand for, exactly?
Answer: You want something more like this:

ADDRESS(id, address, city_fk)
CITY(id, name, state_fk)
STATE(id, name, country_fk)
COUNTRY(id, name)

And if it was me, i'd rename the fields a bit:

ADDRESS(id, address, city_id)
CITY(id, city, state_id)
STATE(id, state, country_id)
COUNTRY(id, country)
Answer: I'm not sure I would head down that path.  I can understand having a country table and certainly a state table, but a city table that ensures that city belongs to the particular country/state in question.  I would just imagine the amount of data that would be necessary in your City FK table would be enormous, and I'm not sure I see the benefit.  Perhaps if you could detail a little more what benefit you hoped to derive from having a city table I might be better able to answer this.  Most systems I have seen have FK tables for Country and State, but those tables are not necessarily related to one another.
Answer: I guess my question is "Good design for what?" If the precise integrity of an address is absolutely crucial to your design, then this might be the start of a fruitful discussion. On the other hand, if the purpose is to collect addresses and be able to store them in all the variety you might expect to get from real users, you might consider something with a little more flexibility: i.e. fewer tables with more optional fields and a good set of friendly validation rules in the UI.
Answer: I would do this:

Country(countryID, countryName)
State(stateID, stateName, countryID(FK))
City(cityID, cityName, stateID(FK))    <- you are bringing the country with that FK
Address(addressID, adressDescription, cityID)  <- Same concept here.

Now tell me, what are the odds to have the same address in different cities, states, countries? Minimal. So this should work. Remember that normalizing the DB to the extreme not always works or is helpfull.
Hope this helps
Best Regards!
Answer: Depends on how you have defined the PrimaryKeys on all the tables. If you have the id column as a key on all of the tables, you can reduce the colums in all of the tables so that they just keep the FK to the next region.

address (GIVEN)
city  via address.city_fk
state via city.state_fk
country via state.country_fk country

Design would be like Chris'. If you need all the data in one query you would do a join.
However, if id is not a key but a partial key (can not define the data-set alone) in all of the tables, then I would assume this a good design. An Address would then be identified like this:

Country 8 (France)
State 3 (Paris-region)
City 23 (Paris)
Address 1 (first Address stored for that City)

Just knowing "City 23" wouldn't be enough, because then the question emerges: 23rd city in WHICH state, and which state in WHICH country - that would cause you to store the data in all of the tables.
But it really depends on how you have defined your keys.
Answer: Consider: If I know the state, and the state FK's the country, I transitively know the country and it's a redundant denormalization to include it again.
If I know the city, and the city FK's the state, I transitively know the state and it's a redundant denormalization to include it again.
So if I know the city, I know the state, and I know the country.
ADDRESS(id, address, city_fk),
CITY(id, name, stateFK),
STATE(id, name, countryFK),
COUNTRY(id, name)
In practice, there are legitimate arguments for making city an entity or and attribute. For something like a mailing address, it's probably simpler to make it an attribute.
For something like a "voter file" (a database used for electioneering and political campaigns) it may sense to make a city an entity. It's especially important in the US State of Virgina, which is unique in the US in that incorporated cities are independent political jurisdictions, unlike the rest of the US, where jurisdictionally, most cities are part of counties.
Even in states other than Virgina, because cities that are part of counties have separate elections (for mayors and councils), in a political database, it's useful to make cities (and getting smaller, wards and precincts and townships and villages, and getting larger, counties and HDs and SDs and CDs) into entities.
Now take for example, Lakewood, in the US State of Ohio. Jurisdictionally, Lakewood is Cuyahoga county. In terms of political TV ads, it is part of the Cleveland-Akron-Canton television Designated Market Area. It lies just outside of the city of Cleveland, which is also jurisdictionally part of Cuyahoga County. Lakewood is divided into four councilmanic Wards, each of which is divided into fifteen or more precincts. It is part of state House District 13, which includes Lakewood and part of the western side of the city of Cleveland. It is part of State Senate District 23, which includes Brooklyn, Brook Park, Cleveland (Wards 7-21 and part of Ward 14), Lakewood, Linndale, Middleburg Heights, Parma and Parma Heights. Lakewood is in 10th US Congresional District of Ohio (Represented by Dennis Kucinich).
Now, for any given Ohio voter, how do we represent in the database who will be on his ballot when he votes?
Answer: What I always do with table design is look at it and work out what sort of trouble I can get into (i.e., what inconsistencies can be generated).
In your particular case, the obvious one is that you could create an address that's in the state of Wyoming and in the city of Dallas, which is in the state of decay, oops, I mean Texas :-)
Similarly you could have an address that is in the country of Australia and the state of Texas (in the US) and the city of Xolotllotla in Peru in South America. I wouldn't want to have to explain your schema to the postman when he tracks you down.
How do you resolve that? You should probably only reference the city from the address, then the state from the city, then the country from the state.
But addresses are a tricky beast and the form they take depends a great deal on where they are located. Some have counties, some cities cross state boundaries and so on.
Unless you have a dire need for finding people in specific cities, I'd just incorporate that into a free-form address (most places have postcodes of some sort which is a better choice for that). You may well want to select by state or country, in which case leave those as separate fields.
My first attempt would have been:
ADDRESS(id, address_including_city, stateFK),
STATE(id, name, countryFK),
COUNTRY(id, name)

You would have to distinguish between 'identical' states in different countries (e.g., Washington and Western Australia both being WA) but you could easily show the country in data entry screens so that the operator knows which state they're entering (or more likely, they'll choose the country first and the choices of state will be whittled down).

a Xolotllotl is not a real city as far as I know, it's just one I made up that sounds like those beautiful Incan names of old.
Answer: Are you perhaps normalizing too far?
While you are reducing the cost of data being repeated you are possibly negating it by requiring 3 or 4 joins to get a whole address...
Personally I would stick to:
ADDRESS:

ID
Street Address (e.g. 123 Joe Street)
City
State
Postcode (ZIP)
Country (e.g. US or AU)

Of course you would have to index on things such as city/state/postcode/country, but it would possibly be a lot quicker then joining on multiple tables.
(Note: I'm not a DBA, so I can't back up my claims, but this is what I use and it works fine)

Table design


Answer lock says it's a question lock

Question: This answer is locked https://judaism.stackexchange.com/a/1997/3350. However, the lock says it's a question lock:
Comment: Either way, it's a bug.
Comment: The historical lock wasn't really designed for use on a specific answer.
Comment: IIRC, similar wording exists in the others.  A simple fix would be to replace "question" (or "answer", if that shows up anywhere) with "post", since questions and answers are both posts and only posts can have post notices.
Comment: Anyone know if this happens on all SE sites?
Comment: I've seen it on another site.  Those annotations are standard across SE.
Answer: Yeah, that's bad, not only from a display standpoint, but also from the back-end, which expects only questions to be locked with historical significance.
So, I've removed the ability to lock answers as historically significant, which was probably used to keep them from being flagged.  To help combat new flags on locked posts, only the "other" reason will be available.
As for the answer you linked, I removed the historical significance lock and relocked it without a notice.  Mods, feel free to make changes to that :)
Comment: The "'other' flags only on locked posts" functionality will be available after the next build.
Comment: That's interesting; "other" doesn't generate an annotation UI thingie, just a "locked" notice like for deletions?  I hadn't noticed that before (or is that new?).

Answer lock says it's a question lock


Bruteforcing a seed with 24 words of a unknown order

Question: How much time would it take to brute force a seed that we know all of its words but also that is completely shuffled? I ask this because the old Trezor model asks for seed in a shuffled way but still all the words can be seen. So if a malicious software would intercept all the words, in what time could the adversary crack the key?
Answer: This depends a little bit if all words are independent. If yes the will be 24! = 620.448.401.733.239.439.360.000 permutations of the words. Assuming that you computer can check 1 billion permutations per second (which is is way too optimistic as this would assume that a signature / public key could be computed within one clock cycle which he can't) this would mean that your computer still would need 620.448.401.733.239 seconds which is 19674289 (19.6 million) years as the absolut minor / lower bound.
This estimation however does not take into account technological breakthroughs in computing hardware which could very well happen in that time frame (:
Comment: Sorry but wouldn't this be a vast over estimation? Assuming the checksum alone is possible in every combination (divide by 16) but every combination cant have a valid checksum with the given word list (I dont think?) Unsure how to calculate lol.
Comment: before checksum computation you would still have to generate each permutation. so if I estimate checksum check with one clock cycle or also add the signature / pubkey computation doesn't make too much of a difference (in my opinion) I think the point is that it is not feasible to brute force this.
Comment: How about if I have the wallet address?

Also, if we account that we can use the checksum hack to further reduce the keyspace by 256?

We would have !24 possibilities \ 256 **minus any improvement gained from having the wallet?

Just brainstorming.


What is optimum maximum frequency of DDS?

Question: According to most DDS datasheets, they can produce up to half the maximum frequency. for example for AD9850, max clock is 125 MHz and it can produce up to 62.5 MHz. But in higher frequencies, the number of DAC steps is reduced and the wave form will start having steps until it is not really a clean sine wave.
Is there any equation ( for example fclock/4 or something ) that shows the maximum frequency in which DDS produces most reliable sine wave?
Comment: No, "most reliable" is not an exact expectation. If you can define a criterion (mathematically), then probably an equation can be constructed.
Comment: That's why you need to post-filter the dac to remove the higher frequency energy content and also use a sinc compensation filter to normalize the amplitude. It's impossible to reconstruct a sinewave with only two samples and that's a fact. Anything more than two samples is do-able but the more samples the better.
Comment: @Andyaka I read the article about sinc compensation you kindly provided in another question. It was written by Maxim and pointed MAX265.As I have no experience on CIC ICs, Should I use that IC or I can make any active filter I want?
Comment: The maxim article was just an explanation of what you need to do to normalize the DDS chips output level as frequency gets higher. Any filter type will do - it doesn't apply to maxim or anyone else's chips.
Answer: This picture is crucial to understanding what is happening: -

Analog Devices use the example of a reconstructed 20MHz signal (F\$_{OUT}\$) on the diagram and as you can see, at 20MHz it's amplitude is a wee bit less than what it would be if it were much lower in frequency. By "much lower" I mean something like 1MHz and that would have been represented by a vertical line much closer to the Y axis. Here's a drawing showing just that: -

As you can see the out-of-band artifacts are much lower and the first artifact (at 99MHz) is much further away from the 1MHz fundamental frequency. This makes it: -

Easier to filter-off the artifacts because the gap between 1MHz and 99MHz is massive compared to the original AD drawing where F was 20MHz and it's first artifact at 80MHz.
The amplitude of the 1MHz sinewave is virtually unity whereas the amplitude of the 20MHz signal has fallen a couple of dB (or so) compared to the amplitude at 1MHz.

Filtering is therefore important; not only do you need to remove the high frequency artifacts in order to get a decent sinewave shape but, you have to compensate for the DAC being an imperfect device that progressively attenuates the wanted signal as you approach the reference clock frequency.
This is normal for all DACs that I'm aware of. A "perfect" DAC would prodice a single impulse of energy at each sample point with the energy level equating to the amplitude and this would give a flat pass-band and not the sinc envelope associated with standard DACs.
Comment: That conclusion is correct at all frequencies other than 100MHz and multiples. It's also worth noting that you can generate frequencies above 100MHz but you need a band-pass filter to remove the fundamental and tune in to the harmonic you require. It's all there in the picture but of course trying to recover anything close to 50MHz is a real pain (say 40MHz) because there will be an artifact at 60MHz and filtering this out requires complex analogue filtering that moves a notch filter around to kill the unwanted artifact.
Comment: So it means the decent maximum frequency that can be obtained is completely dependent on the output low pass filter?.Higher frequencies can be obtained if one can have a good LPF with steep Bode diagram on the target frequency and then compensating well the attenuated signal amplitude . It this conclusion correct?


Neural Network Structure

Question: I am currently building a Neural Network library. I have constructed it as an object graph for simplicity. I am wondering if anyone can quantify the performance benefits of going to  an array based approach. What I have now works very good for building networks of close to arbitrary complexity. Regular (backpropped) networks as well as recurrent networks are supported. I am considering having trained networks "compile" into some "simpler" form such as arrays.
I just wanted to see if anyone out there had any practical advice or experience building neural networks that deployed well into production. Is there any benefit to having the final product be array based instead of object graph based?
P.S Memory footprint is less important than speed.
Answer: People have started using GPGPU techniques in AI, and having your neural net in matrix form could leverage the much faster matrix ops in your typical graphics card.
Comment: That I have considered however our cluster currently does not have any GPUs. I plan to implement that in the future to convince people that we need some GPUs in our clusters
Answer: This all depends on what language you are using - I assume you are using a C derivative.
In my implementations I've found the object graph approach far superior.  There is some tradeoff in speed, but the ease of maintenance outweighs the object lookup calls.  This all depends on whether you're looking for training speed or solving speed as well... I'm assuming you are most worried about training speed?
You can always end up micro-optimizing some of the object call issues if need be.
Considering your secondary motive of sub-netting the networks, I think it's even more important to be object based - it makes it much easier to take out portions of the work.
Answer: However you implement it, you must never forget:

http://xkcd.com/534/
Answer: It's been a while, but I recall that speed is usually only an issue during training of the Neural Network.
Answer: I don't have any personal experience writing such a library, but I can link you to some popular open-source projects which you could perhaps learn from. (Personally I would just use one of these existing libraries.)

Fast Artificial Neural Network Library
NeuronDotNet

Neural Network Structure


Why is the Notre Dame Cathedral not a Major Basilica?

Question: The April, 2019 fire brought the Notre Dame Cathedral of Paris into limelight all across the world. It is said to be home to many important relics including the Crown of Thorn traditionally believed to have been worn by the Lord on the cross. My question is: Why has the Catholic Church not extended the status of a Major Basilica to Notre Dame Cathedral ?
Comment: There are many important churches worldwide, but only 4 Major Basilicas. Why aren't any other ones "Major"?
Answer: There are only 4 Major Basilica's and they're all in Rome.  They all have feast days celebrating their dedications (Which might be one less saint to celebrate).  They have a special blessing associated with a pilgrimage to each of them (and others, in Rome).  Rosaries depicting the 4 major basilicas would be obselete.
A better question might be, why isn't it a Minor Basilica.
Answer: Why is the Notre Dame Cathedral not a Major Basilica?
Only the following four basilicas are major basilicas:

St. Peter's Basilica contain the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles himself.
St. Paul's Basilica is the resting place of the relics of the Apostle St. Paul. (These first two basilicas contain the remains of the two Pillars of the Church.
Basilica of St John Lateran is the cathedral church of Rome and the official seat of the Bishop of Rome, who is the Pope. As such the Basilica contains the papal throne, although the pope rarely visits and lives over at the Vatican.
Basilica of Saint Mary Majorit is the largest church in Rome dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The original church, which was replaced by that of Pope Sixtus III, was built during the pontificate of Pope Liberius (352–366), and is thus sometimes known as the Basilica Liberii or Basilica Liberiana.

There is more!
All four of Rome's Major Basilicas are part of Vatican territory. That is right, there are considered part of the Holy See. These four basilicas are the unique major basilicas in Catholic Culture. All other basilicas are minor basilicas.

Extraterritorial property

Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran (Arcibasilica di San Giovanni in Laterano)
Basilica of Saint Mary Major (Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore)
Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls (Basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura) (the complex includes also the Benedictine monastery, the Pontifical Oratory of San Paolo and the Pontifical Beda College).
Lateran Palace, Lateran University, the Scala Santa and adjoining buildings,
Palace of St Callixtus (Palazzo San Callisto) - home of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum.
Certain buildings on the Gianicolo Hill, namely the Pontifical Urbaniana University, the Pontifical North American College, and the Bambino Gesù Hospital.
  Palazzo della Cancelleria between the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and Campo de' Fiori.
Palazzo di Propaganda Fide (the Palace of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples) in the Piazza di Spagna.
Palace of the Holy Office - home of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Piazza del Sant'Uffizio and adjacent to the Basilica of St. Peter.
Palace of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches (formerly Palazzo dei Convertendi in Piazza Scossacavalli), in Via della Conciliazione (rione of Borgo)
Palazzo Pio in Via della Conciliazione (in exchange for Palazzo della Dataria)
Palace of the Vicariate (also called Palazzo Mattei Mascerotti) in Via della Pigna off the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II near the Piazza del Gesù
Pontifical Minor Roman Seminary
Campo Santo Teutonico
The larger part of Paul VI Audience Hall (the rostrum with the papal throne, however, is part of Vatican territory).
Comment: I think this is not correct. The Major Basilicas are granted extraterritorial status because of their importance not that they are important because they have extraterritorial status
Comment: yes but what I mean is this doesn't answer "why".


How do you add a DLL to the GAC from an InstallScript Project in InstallShield?

Question: How do you add a DLL to the GAC from an InstallScript Project in InstallShield? I tried added [GLOBALASSEMBLYCACHE] as a destination to the component, with no luck. It tells me that is not valid data for the destination.
Answer: An install script only project has no way of putting a file in the GAC. You need an install script MSI project. I ended up creating a separate windows installer and using LauchAppAndWait from install shield to run it. Pretty much a hack because I didn't want to switch to an MSI project.
Answer: Rather than create an InstallScript MSI project, you could create a merge module that installs the desired components to the GAC.  Then include the MSM in your InstallScript cab installation.  That way you avoid the annoyance of LaunchAppAndWait.
Answer: Gacutil can do it but Gacutil isn't redistributable.   It's possible to write your own code to call the fusion API and then call it from installscript but truthfully MSI is way easier.
Answer: IS scripts can access Win32 and other DLL entry pts so you wont require a dedicated MSI installer.
We have a Setup that needs to change file access permissions early in the install process. We added a utility to our support files & billboards section, and those end up in Setup's Temp folder. Then we use LaunchAppAndWait, etc.
Another option may be to modify your .net assembly to auto-GAC itself when it is registered. That easier if using System.Configuration.Install & friends.
Answer: gacutil can do it, just put it in the supportdir (temp dir) and use it from there. then wipe out the temp dir after.


Comments Lost Days after Posted

Question: Recently I noticed twice that my comments under answers (answer 1 and answer 2) were gone several days after they were posted. In answer 2, only part of the comments, which I actually referred to in my answer, were lost. Is it a system bug or is it deleted according to forum rules?
Answer: I deleted the comments in questions. Most of them fell under the "obsolete" removal clause. In addition some not so productive discussion was removed.
This FAQ has some more information on how comments work and who can delete comments.
If I accidentally removed too much don't hesitate to comment the same again (unless a diamond moderator tells you otherwise).
Comment: Thanks a lot for the information. For answer 1 it was OK that the comments were deleted.  But for answer 2, the original comments were a short discussion on the algorithm complexity. It was not possible to reproduce them entirely. The reference to the comments in my answer were invalidated and it would take extra work to fix the text.
Answer: Comments are third-rate citizens on the Stack Exchange network. They can be deleted almost at-will. Please see the MSE FAQ on how comments work.
Comments are temporary "Post-It" notes left on a question or answer.
This is not unique to Code Review. It works like this everywhere on the network.

Comments Lost Days after Posted


fractional laplacian on $\mathbb{R}.$

Question: Is there a book on fractional operator $(-\frac{d^2}{dx^2})^{s}$ with $s\in (0, \frac{1}{2}]$. The textbook should ideally contain estimates and properties of all kinds, and Schauder to Moser theory.
Answer: To my best knowledge, there is no complete book on this topic. Peter Michor already pointed out Triebel, which is a classical reference.
If you look for newer literature, there is e.g.
The "Hitchhiker's guide to the fracional Sobolev spaces" https://arxiv.org/abs/1104.4345 . This is very basic and might not give you the complete answer you need.
Other, more specialized surveys where you might find some hints are e.g. the Abel lecture of J.L. Vazquez "Nonlinear diffusion with Fractional Laplacian Operators"
Answer: You may also give a look to the book authored by Molica Bisci - Radulescu and Servadei about fractional operators entitled Variational methods for nonlocal fractional problems.
Answer: A lot of information about the fractional Laplace operator can be found in a book Hypersingular Integrals and Their Applications by Stefan Samko. Another reference is "Fractional Integrals and Potentials" by Boris Rubin. There are plenty of regularity results there, but from a completely different perspective.
If you are more focused on operators with variable coefficients, you should look into some recent papers of PDE people, for example, Non-local diffusion and applications by Claudia Bucur and Enrico Valdinoci, or Nonlocal elliptic equations in bounded domains: A survey by Xavier Ros-Oton. You can find further references in my survey article Ten equivalent definitions of the fractional Laplace operator.
Answer: Not a book but a great resource on the fractional Laplacian etc. is the Nonlocal Equation Wiki maintained by Luis Silvestre (I think).

fractional laplacian on $\mathbb{R}.$


What is image and video signal ?

Question: Signal is something that carries information. Usually, something is a pattern of variations of physical quantity that can be manipulated, stored, or transmitted by a physical processes.
I am wondering that how image can be a signal. Ok, it is stored, manipulated, transmitted digitally, but how it can carry variations?
Also how video can be kind of a signal?
Answer: A signal doesn't have to be a single quantity; the variation doesn't have to happen along a single axis, either.
An image is information (e.g. brightness) varying in two dimension (e.g. along a X- and a Y-axis).
Simple as that; counts both for digital and analog images.
That information that changes might be one-dimensional (e.g. only brightness for a black and white / grayscale image), or multidimensional (e.g. red, green, blue for a color picture).
Video is information varying in three dimensions: two dimensions like an image, and time as third dimension.
Answer: To build on Marcus's answer, when we have multidimensional data (e.g., stereo audio, video images), we often want to transform it into a one-dimensional signal so that we can transmit it over a single wire or as a radio signal.
There are many ways to do this. For example, with stereo audio, we translate one of the channels1 to a different range of frequencies and then add it to the other channel. This creates a single signal that can be transmitted and then decoded to produce the original two channels of audio. The general term for this is "frequency-division multiplexing".
For video, we take a different approach. We sample the pixel data in time, and then serialize all of that data (i.e., send pixels one at a time) into a high-bandwidth channel, combining the data with synchronization signals that allow us to keep track of where each data item belongs in the image. Again, this one-dimensional signal can be transmitted over a wire or over the air. The general term for this is "time-division multiplexing".

1 I'm ignoring the details of sum and difference processing for simplicity.

What is image and video signal ?


OpenSource Driver with ATI HD 6770

Question: Im currently using fglrx from AMD and wanna try other driver to see if I can get better performance with compiz (I'm getting flickering). Everything I've tried dont works(Radeon, RadeonHD), I think that 6770 is too new; But wait! 6770 is almost identical to 5770! Any idea? I have ubuntu 11.04.
Comment: Go to CCSM (compiz Configuration Settings Manager) then go to the OpenGL plug in and then uncheck Sync to Vblank.

Then go back and on the Composite plug in uncheck Detect Refresh Rate
Comment: @UriHerrera you should post that as an answer.
Answer: Go to CCSM (compiz Configuration Settings Manager) then go to the OpenGL plug in and then uncheck Sync to Vblank. Then go back and on the Composite plug in uncheck Detect Refresh Rate
Answer: It is unlikely you will get better performance with the open-source driver. Fglrx is much more efficient, so it will result in smoother graphics, more FPS in games etc. There are some exceptions, though, the open-source driver supports KMS while fglrx not, so with fglrx you will not get a pretty ubuntu logo while booting-up your system.
Comment: That just isn't true. I'm using a HD5850 and the open driver is _much_ more stable and much faster.
Answer: The open driver has improved significantly over a very short time. If you want to get a feel of how it's progressing, then you might want to fire up Oneiric Alpha 3 and run it live. My experience is that the driver in Oneiric is much better than the one in Natty. Other issues with Oneiric forced me back to Natty, but the improvements in graphics alone makes me want to upgrade as early as I can.
Comment: jo-erlend - if you also want to test newer drivers on Natty, you could always try the x-swat ppa - or the bleeding edge x-edgers ppa.
Comment: The open source drivers in Oneric does not work for me at the moment at all, the X server won't start properly...
Comment: No, but then Oneiric isn't released yet either. The driver works properly. I'm not guessing. I've tested this. The driver works. X doesn't.
Comment: @jo-erlend: It does not matter whether it's X issue or the driver's. The point it that you won't get ANY graphics at the moment. This may mean that some people will be unable to use the **driver** in Oneric (at the moment).

OpenSource Driver with ATI HD 6770


What would happen if the sun shrunk by 25% in 2000 years?

Question: The big bad vilain is stealing energy from our sun. He has been doing this for 2000 years and the sun has already shrunk in mass by 25%. What are the effects on our earth. From what i found here and here I think earth should stay in orbit. But I was wondering how much this would affect the number of days in a year.
Comment: We know that if things die in universe they collapse under their gravity and become smaller and smaller at that process. You can steal the power of stars by using something similar to a Dyson Sphere but, that wouldn't shrink them too. Stealing its energy doesn't shrink it actually.
Comment: We usually advise questioners to wait at lease 48 hours before awarding "best answer" as otherwise it discourages our international audience in many time zones from posting additional helpful material or alternative answers. You are free to withdraw, and then re-award the tick at any time.
Comment: @Thorne - it would not.  Terminal collapse would not occur from only losing 25%.  Also, the sun isn't massive enough to supernova.  Also, since the sun falls under the [Chandrasekhar Limit](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/the-chandrasekhar-limit-the-threshold-that-makes-life-possible/), it will _never_ supernova.
Comment: Fro. What I see in those answers it seems that most mass will still be in between the planets/not be a large amount of mass lost in the sun. That means there is little change in the gravitational attraction in those cases. Losing 25% of the mass will most likely set the Earth on it's escape velocity, as the attraction of the sun wanes while the Earths mass and speed remain constant. I'll leave a real answer to someone with time on their hands to find out in detail though.
Comment: A sun will go supernova once it loses a certain amount of mass. I suspect the sun could go boom losing 25% of it's mass.
Comment: WTF is the villain doing with 25% of the sun's mass? Converted to energy, that would be more than Earth uses since the beginning of time. Probably it's more energy than has hit the Earth since the beginning of time.
Answer: We can calculate the effect on Earth's orbit by applying conservation of angular momentum. Earth's orbital angular momentum is
$$\ell=mvr=mr\sqrt{GM/r}=m\sqrt{GMr}$$
with $M$ the mass of the Sun, $m$ the mass of Earth, $v$ Earth's orbital velocity at any given point and $r$ the distance from Earth to the Sun at any given point. As angular momentum is a conserved quantity, and as the mass of Earth doesn't change, then
$$Mr=\frac{\ell^2}{m^2G}$$
is also conserved. So before and after the Sun loses mass, $Mr$ is the same. We can then calculate the final semimajor axis of Earth:
$$a_f=\frac{M_i}{M_f}a_i=\frac{1M_{\odot}}{0.75M_{\odot}}(1\text{ AU})=1.33\text{ AU}$$
We can also apply Kepler's third law to determine the period:
$$P^2=\frac{4\pi^2}{GM}a^3$$
and plugging in the numbers gives us $P\approx1.78\text{ yrs}$, or around 650 days.
Although you didn't ask explicitly about it in the question, we could consider what happens to Earth's surface temperature, which scales like
$$T_{\text{eff}}\propto\left(\frac{L}{a^2}\right)^{1/4}$$
where $L$ is the luminosity of the Sun. If $L$ doesn't change, then the temperature should decrease by about 14% - a bit too cold for my comfort. On the other hand, the luminosity certainly will decrease. Main sequence stars similar to the present-day Sun typical obey the mass-luminosity relation $L\propto M^{3.5}$, so naively inserting that above, we find that the new luminosity would be 37% of the Sun's present luminosity, leading to a true temperature drop of 33%, which would be quite awful. This is a bit unrealistic, but you'd certainly see the Sun cool and contract - and by enough to ensure that Earth is no longer in the habitable zone as we know it.
Would there be any major changes, or will the Sun continue to operate as simply a less massive, cooler, smaller version of itself? I think the latter is likely. It would need to lose about 60% of its mass to become fully convective (the core is mostly radiative), and it would need to lose about 70% of its mass to never evolve onto the red giant branch. Its evolution would take longer - the time on the main sequence is roughly $\tau\propto L/M\propto M^{-2.5}$ - but it would follow a similar track. We won't see exotic fusion pathways or an unusual stellar remnant.
Speaking of stellar evolution, the mass-loss part of this scenario is actually similar to what happens when a Sun-like star evolves onto the asymptotic giant branch after spending time as a red giant. It should undergo mass loss on the order of $10^{-8}$ to $10^{-5}M_{\odot}\text{ yr}^{-1}$, thanks to powerful stellar winds. In your case, the Sun loses mass at a rate of $10^{-4}M_{\odot}\text{ yr}^{-1}$, which we do see in some extreme AGB stars. So purely in terms of mass loss, your villain is sort of accelerating the Sun's evolution dramatically - although of course it shouldn't trigger hydrogen shell burning outside the Sun's core, so it's not like the Sun will actually become an AGB star. It's simply going through a mass-loss phase like one.
Comment: +1 That's 33% of the *absolute* temperature. Earth's average temperature is 14C, or 287K.  A 33% drop would put us around 190K, or -83C.  An orbit of 1.33AU is not quite as far as Mars is right now (at ~1.5AU), and Mars has an average temperature of about -62C, plus Earth would still have an atmosphere, so I would expect the real average temperature of Earth to probably be not so extreme, and warmer than Mars is now.  Not that it matters much of course - [Snowball Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth) would look like a sweltering paradise by comparison.


Where is System.Json in MonoDevelop on OSX?

Question: I've got MonoDevelop 3.1.1 running on OSX.  I want to use System.Json but I can't find it anywhere.  When Editing References I can't see anything that looks like System.Json.  How do I make it available in my project?
Answer: According to MSDN, it should be in System.Runtime.Serialization assembly. And you should be targetting the 4.5 profile.
BTW upgrading to Xamarin Studio (MonoDevelop 4.0) is highly recommended.


My ornamental pineapple plant fruit turned yellow

Question: How can i revive it???  !yellowing pineaple, was on counter close to heater](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KixsG.jpg)
Answer: It's perfectly normal behaviour - it indicates that the main plant has become fully mature and will soon die down, putting extra effort into the vegetative propagation stage, growing suckers and slips at the soil surface and up by the fruit. When pineapple is grown for the fruit it rarely reaches the fully yellow stage since it becomes soft and difficult to cut open without considerable damage to the flesh. So the fruit we see in the markets is often green with just a hint of yellow. When fully yellow the fruit can fill the room with a sweet aroma.
Since the main plant is coming to the end of its useful life, accept that fact, cut out the main stalk and fruit when the time seems right and focus on encouraging one or more of the suckers at the base of the plant if you wish it to continue into the next stage of its growth, which will be to send up a new main stalk with its own, probably smaller, fruit.
Comment: It was placed on a counter by a heater overnight.  It was still completely green the night before.  I think it was because of the heat.i have another plant bought at the same time.  It is still green.
Comment: Heat speeds up chemical processes; did you try a smell/softness test?