Why do people throw coins in the river?

Question: When I was travelling in train, I saw some people throwing coins in the river, so why do people throw them in the river? Is there any reason behind doing this?
Comment: This is not unique to Hinduism. People all over the world of different faiths do it. It is a popular superstition all over the world, has nothing to do with Hinduism.
Comment: Well known scientific reason is  in ancient times Indian currency was made using copper. Water kept in copper containers is good for health.Storing water in copper and silver pots finds mention in ancient texts of Ayurveda for purification of water . ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3312355/ )
Comment: The original idea is to worship the river (with mangala dravyas) and seek pardon for causing her pain while crossing the river. Offering cash instead of actual dravya became a sort of substitute just as offering akshatas for the actual offering during puja. Along these lines, people may have started offering coin instead of turmeric, kumkuma, flowers etc. to rivers and this later became a rash act of flinging coins into the waters.
Comment: Indians typically offer something at places which they consider holy. It is said that doing so brings them good luck by **gaining the grace of Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth**.
Comment: Superstition, not a hindu practice IMO.
Answer:
In ancient times rivers are main sources of water and it's being the
  only sources of water for drinking and for irrigation purposes. Thus,
  by throwing copper coins in to rivers our forefathers ensured an
  adequate intake of copper to the body via drinking water.
Copper is a vital metal very useful to the human body and used to attracting dirt as it is mentioned in Ayurveda that it purifies
  water. Water was Stored in Copper pots which Kills Contaminating
  Diarrhoeagenic Bacteria and, thus in temples also priests use copper
  vessels to give thirtha/holy water.

Throwing coins in the river was one way our fore-fathers ensured we intake sufficient copper as part of the water as rivers were the only source of drinking water. So if coins remain in rivers for a longer time then it is beneficial for those who drink it.
Source: http://aumamen.com/practice/throwing-coins-into-a-river-importance-of-religious-practices
Comment: Yes, true. But I think this answer will be deleted because of scientific speculation But the problem lies in question itself which is not related to scriptures. IMO
Comment: @CR241 - Another thing is  in ancient times rivers do use to bring Gold , Copper ,Silver with their flow from mountains. (Gold Rush USA).  Coins usually in olden times  were made  from these metals which we gained from rivers.So its a kind of payback to rivers , who bring these metals.And returning  part metals to river , from which they used to get it.
Comment: It would be useful if some reliable sources are cited.

Why do people throw coins in the river?


Contribution page not displaying when member is logged into site

Question: The contribution page displays just fine when the member is NOT logged in to my site. I have Joomla 3.6.0 and CiviCRM 4.6.19. However, when the member is logged in, the contribution page does not display and instead the link throws you back to the homepage. Since the page is open to the public, I can't see where this problem is coming from.
Answer: Have you checked the permissions in CiviCRM?
If, say, profiles are set to be viewable only by Guest and are included on that page, then it would only be viewable if not logged in.
Comment: I had not checked permissions before but now have and made a couple of changes which seem to have solved the problem. Thanks.


How do you remove excess engine oil?

Question: I have about 1 liter above the maximum mark on my car.  Is there an easy way(from above) to remove the oil or do I have to drain it from bottom.  I've seen someone on youtube  use a plastic syringe to take oil out, is that a good idea?
Answer: Fortunately, we've talked about this issue a few times before. As I said back then:

If the oil isn't hot, almost any sort of plastic tubing can be used for siphoning. It's easiest to go in via the dip stick.
Remember not to use the "suck start" siphoning method as you don't want a mouthful of oil. If you have a long enough piece of tubing, you can stick the excess down the dipstick tube, put your thumb over the end, pull out the slack (that is now full of oil) and you'll have an immediate siphon.
Also remember to siphon the oil back into the original container - you might as well keep it until you do need it.
Answer: Normally your oil-filler-cap is located on your valve cover and you do not have direct access to the oil-reservoir through that. What could work is to use the opening where your dipstick normally sits. You'd need a small enough hose to get it down there.
I would not recommend to try it though, if anything gets stuck or breaks off and you have particles in your reservoir you´ll make matters worse. Easier and safer to just use the drain plug.
Did you accidentally put in too much? Otherwise you should probably see if there is a cause for the excess oil. If your motor does not seal properly any more, oil can get diluted with gasoline or coolant.
Comment: yes it was accidental.
Comment: safest way is drain all of it and put 4qts (or whatever) back in

How do you remove excess engine oil?


Is there any restriction in the choice of Ethernet PHY, depending on the TCP/IP stack?

Question: I am new on the forum and am currently working on a project to design an ethernet electronic board. I will have a microcontroller 32-bit with an external PHY.
I wanted to know : depending on the TCP/IP stack I will choose, will there be any restriction on the external ethernet PHY or all the PHY are usable?
The thing is I need to choose the Ethernet PHY before the microcontroller and then I don't know if I will use uIP or Contiki or microchip stack or any other.
Answer: Basically there should be no difference what PHY You'll use, since the low level driver is written separately from all the TCP/IP stack itself. At least I am sure this is done in LwIP, since I use this stack with Micrel PHY - had to write my own initialization setup stuff.
Answer: All PHY will be usable. You choose the PHY based on speed and media (e.g. 100BASET, 1000BASESX). Most PHYs have MII (Media Independant Interface), RMII (Reduced [pin count] MII or GMII (Gigabit MII). Your microcontroller will need one of those interfaces. For example MII is limited to 100 Mb, if you want Gigabit you need GMII or similar.
Answer: Microcontroller TCP stacks tend to include the drivers for the MACs and PHYs used. So if your TCP/IP stack doesn't have a driver for your PHY then you will have some work to do to add one.
Adding a new phy to a stack is not an insurmountable task. The interfaces tend to be fairly standard with just some slight configuration changes needed but if it's your first time working with ethernet sticking with one that is already known to work with your TCP/IP stack is likely the path of least problems.


Does using a fleece cloche hinder plants from getting enough sunlight?

Question: I got some fleece cloth to protect my plants from frost / low temperatures, but it's semi opaque so blocks most sunlight. Is it OK to leave it on through the day (while it's still cold), or do I need to remove it during the day to give the plants enough sunlight?
Answer: You should remove it during the day; unfortunately, UK temperatures tomorrow are set to drop but hopefully not to below 5degC during the day where you are; unless you're growing something really tender, it's best to allow daylight to get to the plants. Replace the cloche after 3 or 4 pm for the time being until the weather's warmer, then you can replace it at dusk if temperatures are low enough to be a problem over night.
If it's very cold tomorrow, you may have to wait another day or two for temperatures to rise a bit; the other option is to replace the fleece with thick, clear plastic instead, which will keep warmth in and allow light through, although it will get too hot inside in full sun between 11-3pm, so will need to be removed in that situation.
Comment: It's forecast to be 7 on Tuesday, and then get warmer until returning to nice weather a week later. I've only been planting outside what I've read can handle the cold, keeping the rest in pots until the weather stabilises. So you say I should cover them at 3-4pm; that seems to be the peak temp. though? When would you suggest I cover in the morning? Based on https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2637627 I'd have guessed around 11am-7pm.
Comment: I've read that plastic can cause humidity problems, which is why I went for the fleece. It still lets some light through (someone on the Amazon page suggested it's ok covering all day, but I trust this site more).
Comment: 3-4pm on non sunny days - after 3 is when the temperature starts to fall on sunless chilly days. If its sunny, fine, do it later. When you say 11am to 7pm, don't you mean 7pm to 11am, overnight in other words? You are correct about the plastic, it does gather moisture on the inside as soon as the sun arrives on it...


Origins of fear

Question: I have a few questions about fear and loneliness

What is the fear?
Where does the fear come from?
Why a person is afraid of loneliness?
Why a lonely person tends to isolate themselves even more?
Comment: This question appears to be off-topic because it is about personal rather than academic questions.
Comment: Could you rewrite this a little so that there is a philosophical starting point. Events in your personal life leading to philosophical questions are not necessarily bad for this site, I think, but, as it stands, the question is too broad and too vague to get a good answer.
Comment: I can say only that there are almost as many formulations of fear as there are philosophers who have wrote on it .. This beta is really only able to be helpful if questions have a fairly precise degree of specificity, and relate to problems closer to an academic, rather than personal nature . If you wanted to use stack exchange you could research & reformulate the question in terms of its physiological and environmental bases and ask this at the cognitive sciences beta .. I see from your profile you're quite young, all I can say is chin up soldier, women come & go, things will get better :)
Comment: What @Ben said. Personal issues leading to philosophical questions is fine. But your final questions are more psychology-related. On a philosophical level, one is a bit too broad, and one is a bit too narrow. We could migrate this to the Cogsci SE or you could reword this to be more accessible within philosophy. In passing, also check out [a question I wrote about fear a while back](http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/the-philosophy-of-fear).
Comment: I dont get it -- if "what is fear and where is comes from" is not philosophy? Then what is? :D
Comment: PAIN is the answer, to be more specific past experience of the pain is followed by fear from repetitions. Any kind of pain can be involved. Fear is natural, but should be guided. Fear is coming from your unconscious, your "reptile brain", it is your instinct. But you have a brain of human, with sensorium and you can tell consciosly to your "reptile brain", what is going on, to control your fear. Otherwise the results will be not rational. About lonelines I cannot give clear answer as it is specific to each person. Someone feels safe when lonley (fear from relationships), other one feels fear o
Comment: First of all - we ALL feel same way.
Everything will be great. There will be new people and new ideas. Just give it some time. Shortly: Fear is there to awaken us and make us think (make us better beings). Fear is there to make you aware that you have BODY. The origin of fear is god.
Answer: It's difficult to answer this question without more context. That personal crisis brings us to question our selves and try to understand our place in life is perhaps a question of practical philosophy. But one needs to know where to begin.
Martha Nussbaum is an American moral philosopher. In her book The Fragility of Goodness, she explores, what she calls luck (and others call mis/fortune or fate) on what it means to be an ethical being and to live a good or flourishing (eudaimonia) life. In her opening section she comments on a few lines of Pindar, a Greek lyric and praise poet:

But human excellence grows like a vine tree
fed by the green dew, raised up
among wise men and just, to the liquid sky

She herself writes:

The excellence of the good person, he writes, is like a young plant: something growing in the world, slender, fragile, in constant need of food from without. A vine tree must be of good stock if it is to grow well. And even if it has good heritage, it needs fostering weather (gentle dew and rain, the absence of sudden frosts and harsh winds), as well as the care of concerned and intelligent keepers, for its continued health and full perfection. So, the poet suggests, do we. We need to be born with adequate capacities, to live in fostering natural and social circumstances, to stay clear of abrupt catastrophe, to develop confirming associations with other human beings.

The poem's next lines are:

We have all kinds of needs for those we love:
most of all in hardships
but, joy too,
strains, to track down eyes it can trust

She continues:

Our openness to fortune, and our sense of value, here again, both render us dependent on what is outside of us;...because we encounter hardships and can come to need something that only another can provide; our sense of value, because even when we don't need the help of friends and loved ones, love and friendship matter to us for their own sake. Even the poets joy is incomplete without the tenuous luck of seeing it confirmed by eyes, on whose understanding, good will, and truthfulness he can rely on.

Her book is on the vision of life by the tragic poets and dramatists of ancient Greece. Plato, although (apparently) a promising tragic poet turned away from this vision in an attempt to find a way of living life that would become impervious to the vicissitudes of fortune. His way is the way of contemplation. She considers this a radical solution - almost denying the body. She shows how Aristotle tries to harmonise what is best in the poets with can be salvaged from Plato.
Bearing in mind what Nussbaum has said, let us follow the thread of thought of Octavio Paz, a Mexican writer who published in 1950, an essay - The Labyrinth of Solitude. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990, and this essay is worth quoting from at some length as it touches on some of your concerns:

Solitude - the feeling and knowledge that one is alone, alienated from the world and oneself - is not an exclusively Mexican characteristic. All men, at some moment in their lives, feel themselves to be alone. To live is to be separated from what we were to approach what we are going to be in the mysterious future. Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition...Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude.

Although Octavio does not say so, he is referring to the symbolic myth of Eden in Genesis where man is cast out of the green world when he is aware of himself. This is also reflected in the Greek myth of Prometheus who having brought the fire of intellect, the divine spark of consciousness is punished by the gods.

All our forces strive to abolish our solitude. Hence the feeling that we are alone has a double significance: on the one-hand it is self-awareness, and on the other it is a longing to escape from ourselves. Solitude - the very condition of our lives - appears to us as a test and purgation, at the conclusion of which our anguish and instability will vanish. At the exit of the labyrinth of solitude we will find reunion and plenitude and harmony with the world.

The labyrinth is of course the inescapable lair of the mythical minotaur and was killed by the Greek hero Theseus. He is helped by the monster's half-sister Ariadne who guides him out of the labyrinth via a thread she had tied to him. This is the reverse of the North European folk-tale Sleeping Beauty where the prince wakes the princess. Of course both are tales of sexual awakening, of love and of socialisation to the adult world.
Jung said, to lose Ariadne's thread, is to lose the thread to life. Borges, the Argentinian writer, in The House of Asterion, expands the myth by expanding the labyrinth to take on the proportions of the entire universe, Asterion (the Minoan name for the Minotaur) himself has forgotten he has created the labyrinth - he wanders it, lost - and looking forward to death, his redeemer; which does come as Theseus. He remarks to Ariadne later, before he abandons her in Naxos for her sister, 'that the Minotaur hardly defended himself'. Borges is writing here about the death of the Christian God and skillfully inverts Christian narrative of Man being redeemed by God, of God being redeemed by Man.

In our world, love is an almost inaccessible experience. Everything is against it: morals, classes, laws, races and the very lovers themselves...Modern eroticism, is almost always rhetorical, a complacent literary exercise. It is not a revelation of man; it is simply one more document describing a society that encourages crime and condemns love.

If Paz was writing now, it would be a complacent virtual or visual exercise, rather than a literary one.

Society pretends to be an organic whole that lives by and for itself. But while it conceives of itself as an indivisible unit, it is inwardly divided by a dualism which perhaps originated when man ceased to be an animal, when he invented his self, his conscience and his ethics. Society is an organism that suffers the strange necessity of justifying its ends and appetites...too often they even deny mans profoundest instincts...when this last occurs, society lives through a period of crisis: it either explodes or stagnates. Its components cease to be human beings and are converted into mere souless instruments.

At the dawn of the American age, that is just post the Civil War, Walt Whitman sang out the organic wholeness of America in his long muscular lines, which two centuries later at Ferlinghettis City Lights bookshop shaped into one long Howl by Ginsberg in 1955. This was predated by the visit of the Spanish Poet, Lorca to New York where he wrote a seminal sequence of poems including this:

Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
because morning and hope are impossible there:
sometimes the furious swarming coins
penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.

To continue with Octavia Paz:

Industrial societies, regardless of their differing 'ideologies', politics and economics strive to change qualitative human - that is, human - differences into quantitative uniformity. The methods of mass production are applied to morality, art and emotions. Contradictions and exceptions are eliminated, and this results in the closing off our access to the profoundest experiences life can offer, that of discovering reality as a oneness in which opposites agree.

Mercantile values replacing personal ones, is the diagnosis offered by Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman in 1949. Francis Bacon in Britain was painting solitary figures cubically arranged in positions of estrangement.

The child must face an irreducible reality, and at first he responds to its stimuli with tears or silence. The cord that united him with life has been broken, and he tries to restore it by means of play & affection. This is the beginning of a dialogue...through magic the child creates a world in his own image and thus resolves his own solitude. Self-awareness begins when we doubt the magical efficacy of our instruments.
Adolescence is a break with the world of childhood and a pause on the threshold of the adult world. Solitude is a distinctive characteristic of of adolesence. Narcissus, the solitary, is the very image of the adolescent. It is during this period that we become aware of our own singularity for the first time. But the dialectic of the emotions intervenes once more: since adolescence is extreme self-consciousness it can only be transcended by self-forgetfulness, by self-surrender.
The literature of modern nations  are filled with adolescents, with solitaries in search of communion: the ring, the sword, the vision. Adolescence ends with entry to the world of facts.

It is a world of facts, because it is a shared world, and thus objective one.

Solitude is not a characteristic of maturity. When a man struggles with other men or with things, he forgets himself in his work, in creation or in the construction of objects, ideas and institutions. His personal consciousness unites with those of others: time takes on meaning and purpose and thus becomes history.
During vital and productive epochs, therefore a mature man suffering from the illness of solitude is always an anomaly. This type of solitary figure is very frequent today, and indicates the gravity of our ills. In an epoch of group work, group songs, group pleasures man is more alone than ever. Modern man never surrenders himself to what he is doing. A part of him - the profoundest part - always remains detached and alert. Man spies on himself. Work, the only modern god, is no longer creative. It is endless, infinite work, corresponding to the inconclusive life of modern society. And the solitude it engenders - the random solitude of hotels, offices and shops and movie theaters - is not a test that strengthens the soul - a necessary purgatory. It is utter damnation, mirroring a world without exit.

Since you posted this under Existentialism, it's worth thinking about this in the context of Camus - The myth of Sisyphus, and Sartre's drama of the soul - No Exit.
Answer: Fear is a feeling and state of mind which forces us to believe that the situation is going to  happen or we're worrying only which is never going to happen. Fear arises from much more tension/worry. Some time if we did some thing which we should not and we worry because we know the result of our action which we don't like.
For loneliness I agree with @Dee

About loneliness I cannot give clear answer as it is specific to each
person. Someone feels safe when lonely (fear from relationships),
other one feels fear of loneliness (fear from absence of relationships.
This mostly depends of their previous experiences.

But as per my point of view, we're social animals and that's why we need accompany of people around us. We feel safe when they're with us and we feel fear when we're alone. As you told that when you're alone you even feel more depression, because we all know that "An empty mind is Devil's workshop". This means that in loneliness, our empty mind force us to think negative thoughts only and actually they're (situations/results/consequences) never going to happen.
So if you feel fear when you're alone then definitely get company with your friends, parents, guardians or with whom you feel safe, you can free yourself, can free your heart.

Origins of fear


Which fonts do designers use?

Question: Let me inform you that I am not a designer by trade and I don't have any design sense, either. But by luck I have to design forms in my company. But I do not get the professional look that you see on websites. I want to know which fonts designers use for:

Description
Title (say, the title of a blog post)

Also what should the sizes be?
Comment: That has a thousand answers, depends on the branding for the site.  Generally, you should only use web-safe fonts, that is, the font families that should be present on all browsers.  See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_fonts
Comment: @acme - don't even joke about that... someone will take you seriously. :p
Comment: If it's a movie website, the only font you are allowed to use is [Trajan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan_%28typeface%29).
Comment: Use Comic Sans wherever you can ;-)
Answer: Whatever site or resource you turn to, the two key terms you'll want to learn more about are body type and display type.
In your case, the description is likely an example of body type -- a consistent, easy-to-read design -- and the title probably calls for display type -- something designed to grab your attention first, like a big headline in a newspaper.
Check out http://typekit.com/libraries/full?tags=display. These are all fonts designed to scream at you. On a poster from 20 feet away, you'd notice them. But you wouldn't want to read a whole blog entry using these.
Now look at http://typekit.com/libraries/full?tags=paragraph. These are examples of body type. They're all clean and easy to read for longer stretches of text, but don't draw much attention for titles and headlines.
Just within the past year or two, there are more options than ever for using fonts on Web sites, like the @font-face property @yetanothercoder mentions in his comment or the Typekit site I mentioned above. Even one of their free accounts enables you to have dozens of typefaces embedded in your site. The user doesn't need to have any of these particular fonts installed -- a script in the head of your page calls to Typekit's server, retrieves it, and embeds it. You can even control these fonts with CSS.
Like most new Web toys, if you decide to use these options, you'll want to make sure you have some fallbacks for older browsers that don't support them. Basically, let the font-family rule cascade down to a font you're fairly sure everyone has, like "arial, helvetica".
That said, and without knowing the tone of what you're designing, a few examples of solid body fonts:

Georgia (pretty common, but handsome)
Minion Pro
Droid Serif (could also be used for display at large sizes)

And some nice display fonts:

Franklin Gothic Condensed (There are many, many versions of Franklin, with subtle flavors ranging from body to display. Depending on the need, you could design a whole site just using the Franklin family.)
FF Meta Web Pro
Urbana

Hope this is helpful. Have fun.
Answer: Why don't you just look at the HTML source of a page on a website that you like? It'll tell you what the font is (unless rendered as a static image but that seems unlikely for blog post)
Answer: Designers use all kinds of fonts, often forgetting that most of them can't be used online.
Here's the safe list of fonts.
Comment: And Google Font Lab : http://code.google.com/webfonts/preview#font-family=Allan
Comment: @diodeus: are you entirely right? https://developer.mozilla.org/en/css/@font-face
Comment: @yetanothercoder Unfortunately, support for @font-face is not 100%, so it's always good to have a safe font specified as a backup.

Which fonts do designers use?


Cable modem speed test

Question: Are the popular speed tests (cable, dsl, etc) that are available accurate? if so, how?
Also, it seems that they only measure download speed of one file and not responsiveness, latency, robustness, etc.
Does anyone know how it should be measured? any links to good articles on that topic?
Answer: I'd say most speed tests are flawed if you want to measure web browsing performance (which is what a sizable number of people will be doing). Almost all tests use Flash or Java, totally bypassing your browser HTTP stack. These tests also normally use a single large file, totally bypassing the benefits of persistent connections and HTTP/1.1 pipelining only some browsers support natively. If you do use Flash or Java to download single large files, then these tests may be more relevant.
Also, I've seen great variability in results across browser for some flash tests, which has to do with the way browsers handle flash animation, thus skewing results with no relation to network performance.
To make these tests better, the methodology needs to reflect:

That tests are tailored to what is being tested! Don't use flash unless you are testing flash network performance on single files. A browser test should use multiple resources (remembering CSS and JS can block successive downloads in some browsers) across multiple tabs to reproduce real circumstances. If you are testing torrent speed, you need huge numbers of small bandwidth HTTP/UDP connections.
Measuring variability. Most tests do something once, and a single sample is not sufficient to know something reliably. One needs to average across repeat tests, and critically, variance needs to be estimated. Is 180 really better than 150 when the variability is +- 100??? {answer: no}

Not sure of a perfect resource for this, but Steve Souder writes extensively on web performance at least:
http://stevesouders.com/
The tests others have suggested all fall foul of these technical problems. They will give you a rough number that may help generally, but you should be aware of the limitations. Particularly fancy flash animations seem utterly useless, and as I've said actually can skew results significantly.
Comment: Good points about Flash.  Speedtest.net looks pretty and it told me my ping was decent, but when I actually tried to play an FPS the lag was horrible.
Comment: Small FYI on HTTP 1.1 pipelining: The big browsers either don't support it at all (Internet Explorer, Safari) or else don't have it enabled by default (Firefox).  I think Opera is the exception.
Comment: See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_pipelining:  "Google Chrome is not believed to support pipelining, although it may be implemented in the near future."
Comment: @cwrea: how about Chrome?
Comment: While this was true in 2009 when the answer was written, it no longer applies today. There are many tests that use HTML5, using regular HTTP web browser connections: https://netperf.tools or http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest and also https://www.measurementlab.net/tools/ndt/
Answer: A good connection is made up of key parts: Through put and responsiveness. There are more but I am sticking to the main 2 (in my opinion). Through put is how much data can be pushed or pulled through the connection (download/upload). Responsiveness is how fast does my request make it the destination and back. Both affect each other a bit.
Through put is a pretty easy test, just go to one of the sites listed here and it will test your upload/download speeds. Just remember that the connection you pay for from you ISP is an UPPER limit (most of the time). For example I pay for a 6mb down/ 1mb up connection. 6mb down/1mb up is the uppper limit of my connection. Some ISPs will have a lower limit. An example would be if an ISP says your connection will be between 3mb down and 6mb down. The other key part is the remote host that you are pulling from or pushing data too. If you connection is bigger, then you are limited by the remote host connection and effectively DoS the remote host.
Responsiveness is a bit hard to test. I am not 100% sure on the correct way to test it. commands like ping and tracert in window are a good start. They will give you a rough idea of how long a round trip to and from a remote host takes. This also takes into account the time the remote host takes to process your request and send it back so take this with a grain of salt. Responsiveness is not a big deal when surfing the web or chatting on line. It comes into play with applications like online games. A slow response time will cause you to "lag" and make the game less fluid to the point of unplayable. Online games rely on fast response over higher through put.
Other things to consider in evaluating a connection are Uptime, what ports are blocked, ISP policies regarding us of Bittorrent, IRC, SMTP,  or other services.
Comment: The words you are looking for are bandwidth and latency.
Comment: https://netperf.tools measures, in addition to throughput, idle latency, latency during upload and latency during download. This can detect jitter and bufferbloat problems, that can cause the lag as you mention.
Answer: DSLReports have been round for awhile and have a decent download, upload, and latency test.
Comment: I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but given the title of your question, there will be a large amount of google traffic hitting this page looking for speed tests.
Answer: speedtest.net is another popular service.
however, for most accurate results run a series of tests over a period of time, at different times of the day.
Comment: Speedtest is not particularly accurate these days.  A lot of ISPs have a 'turbo mode' that works for a few seconds and doubles or triples your bandwidth for that very limited timeframe.  speedtest is completely fooled by this, as are most other sites, and shows only your speed during this turbo mode.  If you care about speed, you probably care more about sustained speed.
Answer: http://www.speedtest.net/
and
http://www.bandwidthplace.com/  are both very good.
Answer: In addition to using just a speed test often it's helpful to find out packet loss as that can give the appearance of a slow connection as well. Under both Unix and Windows you can use the traceroute command, or if you want a nice GUI program you can try something like Ping Plotter.
Answer: http://www.internetfrog.com/mypc/speedtest/ is another speed test tool you can try.
Answer: If your ISP provides a test that runs off of one of their servers, that will be your best choice.
There is a COX speed test available for COX customers.
The reason for this is that the Internet is made up of many connections, and your connection to your ISP is merely one of them.  These speed test websites are convenient to use, but results may vary simply based on the Internet traffic between your ISP and that speed test webserver.
If you want to measure the speed from you to your ISP, then you need to use a server on their network.
On the other hand -- at some point you will want to connect to some server outside of your ISP.  (Let's say, www.superuser.com)  The connection from your ISP to the outside world is important too.  A good ISP will have several connections to the Internet, so if there are problems in the AT&T network, you will still have connections with Global Crossing, and Level 3's networks.
To get an idea of this, you probably cannot do much better than to try various speed test websites, at different times of the day and days of the week, and see what patterns you notice.

Cable modem speed test


CSS rollover help for percentage widths

Question: Does anyone know of a method where I could have a CSS rollover image with a percentage width so that it scales with the size of the page?
I presume that I wouldnt be able to use the method shown here http://www.vision.to/css-only-single-image-fast-rollover.php because that sets the image sprite as the background image.
The only other CSS method I have seen was here: http://thefiles.macadamian.com/2008/06/pure-css-image-rollover-without.html
I like this method but was wondering if it were possible to use one image sprite as opposed to having to load the images separately.
Sorry if I sound very vague, whenever I read these questions I always think the people writing them dont describe what they mean properly and now I've come to do it I'm no better myself haha.
Thanks for any help :)
Answer: I don't see how you could do this with sprites. They're done by setting a large image as a background for an element, usually a DIV, and then altering the position so that only the desired portion of the image is shown.  Different DIVs can show different parts of the image by altering the background image position.
However, you can't scale background images. They're always shown at 1:1. You can make them repeat within the element, or not, but you can't scale them, so the sprite idea is out.
Doing it with separate images is fairly straightforward, as indicated by the link you posted.
Preloading an image for rollover is pretty simple. Just include an image tag with the CSS set to hide the image:

Comment: Thanks for the advice :)  do you know if it is possible to preload the rollover image? sorry if this is really obvious I am quite new to web design, thanks
Comment: I've added info on preloading to my answer.
Answer: If you don't need to support IE8 and earlier, you could use the CSS3 background-size property with percentage values.
As with foreground images, a sprite file most likely wouldn't be a reasonable option. There are added complexities with sprite files when the image is scaled. The background-position is based on the scaled size of the image, and getting an accurate position using percentage values is problematic.

CSS rollover help for percentage widths


Decode ByteCode contract

Question: How to decode a ByteCode contract on etherscan for exemple : https://etherscan.io/address/0x6b75d8af000000e20b7a7ddf000ba900b4009a80#code?
Answer: It is a pretty difficult task to decompile compiled bytecode. There are some compilers such as https://ethervm.io/decompile, but the code it will produce will in most cases be difficult to read.
That is due to the fact, that firstly variable names are artificially generated (as original names are not written in the bytecode) and secondly the contract produced will be structured differently than the original contract, as the decompiler can't always tell which commands were used.
Answer: You can perhaps try with the Etherscan decompiler:
https://etherscan.io/bytecode-decompiler
But as Nal said, it maybe impossible to get the exact same code you compiled.

Decode ByteCode contract


What the pros and cons of PayPal's recurring Subscribe button versus their other plans

Question: I'm trying to get recurring payments to work on my Rails site.
I have two options:

Recurring Payments via the PayPal Subscribe button API (http://ianpurton.com/adding-paypal-subscription-to-your-rails-appl)
Recurring Payments via ActiveMerchant and PayPal Express (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/471936/recurring-billing-with-rails-and-activemerchant-best-practices-pitfalls-gotcha)

My monthly payments are going to be cheap (less than $5/mo).  I only need one paid plan (a pro plan) and don't plan on adding additional plans.  I also expect volume to be very modest ... and is meant to help cover some of my server expenses.
For me the biggest factors:
- Ease of adding this to my site.
- Least amount of surchages and monthly minimums
Thanks for any help!
Answer: If you ever need to transfer control of the subscriptions, it's hard to do since the subscriptions are tied to a specific paypal account / email account


COM C# Memory leak Tracing

Question: Is there a way to find out the memory usage of each dll within a c# application using com dll's?  Or what would you say is the best way to find out why memory grows exponentially when using a com object (IE. Whether the COM object has a memory leak, or whether some special freeing up of objects passed to managed code has to occur(and/or how to do that)).
Answer: Are you releasing the COM object after usage(Marshal.ReleaseComObject)?
What type of parameters are you passing in/out of the calls?
If you don't have the COM object source code and want to determine why its 'leaking', Run the COM object outa proc, attach WinDBG to the process and set breakpoints on memory allocation APIs(HeapAlloc,etc...). Look at the call stack and allocation patterns. Sure you can use profilers on the managed side but if you want to know what is going on you are going to have to get your hands dirty...
Comment: Hopefully, a profiler will give you the info you need in order justify going deeper.
Answer: A Microsoft support engineer has a fabulous blog that walks through lots of cases like this.  She goes over all the tools she uses.  I found it extremely helpful to read through all of her posts when I was debugging this kind of stuff a few years ago.
Edit: Apparently, she has added a series of labs that explain how to setup your environment and diagnose different problems.  You may want to start here.
Answer: dotTrace rocks: http://www.jetbrains.com/profiler/
Keep in mind that all COM objects in .NET are basically MarshalByRefObject-derived classes at heart, so you should be able to look for memory consumption by such objects as one potential filter.
Answer: First thing I'd want to do is be absolutely certain that I'm not leaking references anywhere, then go into the smallest steps that will reproduce the steps (a good profiler is essential, I happen to use and recommend RedGate's ANTS Profiler) -- it can be done, and it is worth sending example code that reproduces the issue to the vendor of the COM object so they can resolve it (There is actually a hotfix for Crystal Reports as a result of a memory leak in it which I found :)

COM C# Memory leak Tracing


What IM do you use to login into Microsoft Office Communicator?

Question: I've used Pidgin, but it hasn't worked 100%, so maybe you know about something better...
Answer: I used to use pidgin-sipe in Pidgin. The same plugin apparently works through empathy too.
I say "used to" because I'm not longer in an environment where I need it, not because I found anything better. As far as I know, it's the only plugin to tackle the problem.
In short, I think you're left trying get your problems fixed (report a bug), rather than jumping boat to another project... Which is probably healthier for both of you.
Comment: I use Pidgin and `pidgin-sipe` currently for Communicator 2010
Comment: I am using the same. Not perfect, especially for managing my online status, but i don't know of anything better.
Comment: looks like pidgin-sipe is really the best option
Comment: The only option from what I can see (short of running the native client through WINE or a VM)
Answer: pidgin-sipe works very well, make sure your office communicator server and proxy server (if necessary) is set correctly.
Answer: As it was said, you can use either Empathy (installed by default on UBuntu) or Pidgin (available in the Software Centre), as long as you install the following plug-in which works for both: pidgin-sipe.
There is a detailed explanation of the steps on this forum thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1291311
Look for Huygens' (myself) posts.


Who is the adi buddha?

Question:
In many web sites they are saying that there is another buddha and he is the incarnation of lord vishnu and he existed before lord buddha existed.My Question
Were there two buddhas ?
Was he an incarnation of lord vishnu ?
Was his teachings same as lord buddhas teachings ?
Comment: This question is an attempt to propagate Hindu beliefs
Comment: @SankhaKulathantille :D
Answer: In Buddhism, the Buddha is unrelated to Vishnu (refer to this link),which states:

The Buddha is neither an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu, as is believed by some, nor is He a savior who freely saves others by His
  personal salvation. The Buddha exhorts His disciples to depend on
  themselves for their deliverance, for both purity and defilement
  depend on oneself. Clarifying His relationship with His followers and
  emphasizing the importance of self-reliance and individual striving,
  the Buddha plainly states: "You should exert yourselves, the
  Tathagatas (Buddhas) are only teachers.

In fact, in the oldest Pali scriptures, it appears Vishnu is not mentioned at all because the primary Brahmanistic gods mentioned were Indra, Brahma & Prajapati.
About the Vedas that existed during the Buddha's life, Wikipedia states:

Vishnu is a Vedic deity, but not a prominent one when compared to Indra, Agni and others. Just 5 out of 1028 hymns of the Rigveda, a 2nd
  millennium BCE Hindu text, are dedicated to Vishnu, and he finds minor
  mention in the other hymns.

The idea that the Buddha was a reincarnation of Vishnu is strictly from Hinduism and part of the assimilation of Buddhism into Hinduism, which made Buddhism extinct in India.
Comment: never head of him or her. refer to google
Comment: what about ADI-BUDDHA
Answer:
Were there two buddhas ?

There are not just one, nor two, but many many buddhas in all directions of the cosmos, literally speaking.

Was he an incarnation of lord vishnu ?

"adi-buddha" belongs to the Tibetan Buddhism, maybe related to the Tibetan's rooted religion, Bon. "adi-buddha", thus completely confusing here how does an Indian god related.

Was his teachings same as lord buddhas teachings ?

No. I think in the "adi-buddha" related faculty no record showed what he taught.
If you are interested in Buddhism, read some fundamental sutras such as the Heart Sutra. Buddhism is about how to end the suffering and be truly liberated from life. It's not about supernatural, mystic, magic, spell, voodoo power that sorts of things.
Comment: so gautama buddha was lord vishnu
Comment: @sakthi If you do read my answer, I'm completely speechless that you've drawn such your conclusion. I'm sure the other readers have my clear answer. This is an open platform, question and answer are to serve all people interested in Buddhism. And my task here is to provide what I know as much clear and accurate, for those studying authentic Buddhist Teaching. I don't know your purpose maybe you have an interest in promoting your Hindu gods?
Answer: Adi Buddha is the first primordial Buddha. The trikaya consists of dharmakaya (truth), sambhogakaya (bliss), nirmanakaya (emanation). Adi Buddha is particularly known for emanating the universe. Buddhahood is neither god nor man. All devas (including Vishnu) in Buddhism  are created and impermanent. All Buddhas teach the same thing, although they might teach it in a different way.
Comment: Can you please add which Buddhism school(s) hold this view?

Who is the adi buddha?


What does matrix multiplication have to do with scalar multiplication?

Question: Why are matrix and scalar multiplication denoted the same way and treated as the same operation in standard mathematical notation?  This is always a source of confusion for me because they have completely different properties (specifically commutativity).  Multiplying a 1x1 matrix by an NxN matrix isn't even generally equivalent to multiplying an NxN matrix by a scalar.  (The former is not even always defined.)  Wouldn't it be clearer to consider these to be completely unrelated operations and use completely different notation to represent them?
Comment: They are not "treated as the same operation"; we call them both "multiplication", but that's not the same as "treat[ing them] as the same operation". We call addition of vectors "sum", just like sum of numbers, even when it has nothing to do with sums of numbers (the set of positive reals is a vector space over the reals with vector addition $\mathbf{u}\oplus\mathbf{v}=uv$ and scalar product $\alpha\odot\mathbf{v}=v^{\alpha}$). We call them "multiplication" because they have enough similar properties to warrant it.
Comment: That said, "multiplication" of matrices is best thought of as and analogue of "composition" (just like composition of functions). It's just that the set of $N\times N$ matrices, for a fixed $N$, form a ring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_%28mathematics%29 under addition of matrices and matrix composition/multiplication, and the second operation of rings is always called "multiplication".
Comment: @Arturo:  Good point, but vector addition maps to scalar addition in a much more transparent way (it's just the component-wise sum) and preserves important properties like commutativity.  It's subjective, but I think scalar vs. matrix multiplication stretches things much further than scalar vs. vector addition.  Thus from a notational clarity point of view, denoting vector and scalar addition the same way is more reasonable than denoting scalar and matrix multiplication the same way.
Comment: No, vector addition is *not* always "component-wise sum". That's the point of my example above. For what it may be worth, "scalar multiplication" is definitely *different* from "multiplication". Multiplication is a binary operation on a set (takes two arguments from the set, returns an element of the set), whereas "scalar multiplication" is not an operation under that definition. In General Algebra, "scalar multiplication" is viewed as an entire family of unary operations instead.
Comment: By "scalar multiplication" I understood the vector space map that takes a scalar and a vector and returns a vector; if you meant "multiplication of 'scalars'/'numbers'", then my last comment probably reads like nonsense.
Answer: The product of matrices is defined so that it corresponds to the composition of the corresponding linear maps. One can derive the usual formula for matrix multiplication from this fact alone. This should be covered in every good linear algebra textbook, e.g. Axler's Linear Algebra Done Right. $\:$ See also Arturo Magidin's answer here. So your question reduces to why composition of maps is denoted the same as multiplication. One answer is that rings arise naturally as subrings of linear maps on their underlying additive groups (left regular representation). This is a ring-theoretic analog of the Cayley representation of a group as subgroups of permutation, by acting on itself by left multiplication. This allows us to view "functions" as "numbers" and exploit operator theoretic techniques such as factoring characteristic polynomials and differential and difference operators (recurrences), etc. The point of the common notation is to emphasize this common ring structure so that one may exploit it by reusing similar techniques where they apply.
Examples of such techniques abound. For some examples of operator algebra see here, here, here. See also here, here where the fibonacci recurrence is recast into linear system form, yielding an addition formula and fast computation algorithm by repeating squaring of the shift matrix.
Comment: @dsimcha: It's always a good idea to say something about your level of knowledge when asking a question on a general level math site. Do you know any abstract algebra, e.g. do you know the definition of a ring? This is undergrad math, not Ph.D.
Comment: I'm sure this answer makes sense to a theoretical mathematician, but I asked the question from an engineer/applied mathematician's perspective.  To me "multiplication", when unqualified, means scalar multiplication.  From my perspective (this is admittedly subjective) if something is called multiplication, its properties should be similar to scalar multiplication in ways that are obvious in everyday contexts and don't require a Ph.D. in pure mathematics to appreciate.
Comment: No, I only know math related to engineering and probability/statistics.  I know virtually nothing about the more theoretical branches.  I've heard of abstract algebra, but know **absolutely nothing** about what it is.  In hindsight I should have clarified this in my original post.  Then again, your post makes me believe the reason matrix multiplication is called "multiplication" is much deeper than scientists, engineers, statisticians and generally people who aren't full-fledged mathematicians have the background to appreciate.
Comment: @dsimcha: The basic ideas *are* accessible to engineers. I've added some links to prior questions which give some examples.
Comment: @dsimcha:  would you agree that, forgetting all that phd math stuff, scalar multiplication and vector multiplication are similar to each other than either are to, say, vector addition?


Regex pattern to match guid in URI path

Question: I have a SQL guid as REST path param in my request URI. I want to use mod_rewrite, proxypasmatch directives to selectively filter request based URI string and do something else. Problem - my path contains path param,so I need to use a regex to match it.
**
GUID - f4b558edsf443-8bbsrf5359-4cfdgdg67-9a87-5d3b9ef4571d
Basically the guid is a pattern of characters seperated by "-" and can have upper and lower case alphanumeric characters, numbers and "+" or "-".
Regex - .*?([A-Za-z0-9-+]+-[A-Za-z0-9-+]+-[A-Za-z0-9-+]+-[A-Za-z0-9-+]+-[A-Za-z0-9-+]+)
URI - http://example.com/app/api/projects/f4b558e3-8bb9-4c67-9a87-5d3b9ef4571d/command
**
My question is there a better regex pattern to match any no. of such character groups instead of assuming that there will only be 4 or 5 groups?
Answer: try this regex
<code>".*?\\p{XDigit}+(-\\p{XDigit}+)+"
</code>

Regex pattern to match guid in URI path


How to uninstall or remove TLP?

Question: I searched but couldn't find how to uninstall TLP. I installed it but performance is weird. So I uninstalled it through Synaptic but I still have the icon of it running.
Answer: As mentioned here in answer #6 https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/249516
sudo apt-get --purge remove tlp

That will uninstall the TLP package and remove all configurartions
Answer: Try opening a terminal and issuing the following commands:
sudo apt-get remove tlp
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:linrunner/tlp
Comment: AU cares for [high quality answers](https://askubuntu.com/help/how-to-answer) (and questions). While your answer may provide a viable solution, it lacks an explanation. Can you please [edit] your answer to elaborate on what these commands are supposed to do? You can also [format code and shell commands nicely](https://askubuntu.com/editing-help#code).

How to uninstall or remove TLP?


Can we relate volume to amount of matter?

Question: Is volume the amount of matter in a body?If so, one kilogram water should have the same volume in its gaseous form. If we think of it, there is more space between the molecules of water in gaseous form, so some would say that the volume of water in gaseous form is more than the volume of water in liquid form. But we should ignore the the intermolecular space and only count the space occupied by the atoms. Since the number of atoms is constant therefore volume should be constant.Am I right?
Answer: Volume is not really about the amount, but about the space occupied. Let's perhaps stay at the macroscopic quantities to make the things easier to understand. We'll see that the concepts roughly translate to microscopic quantities as well.
Consider that I have one cup of lightly packed flour. The volume occupied is one cup, and the flour in the cup has some mass. Now, if I pack some more flour into the cup (suppose you press hard), the volume will stay the same, but the mass (or the amount of atoms in the cup) will change.
Atoms too have different sizes, depending on its type. For instance, a plutonium atom is about three times the size of a hydrogen atom. But it's 244 times heavier and contains 94 protons (hydrogen contains just one)! So the volume does not scale proportionally to the "amount of matter" (if by "matter" you mean elementary particles within the atom), as you put it. We're not even dealing with multiple molecules here, but individual atoms, yet we fail if we try to link these two quantities.
Remember that $V=\frac{m}{\rho}$, volume is proportional to the mass divided by its density.
(perhaps this would be more suitable for a comment)
Answer: Volume measures the area.
Matter simply put, is a measurement of particles that have mass in the object at rest.
Density is the mass of the object divided by its volume.
Is volume the amount of matter in a body? So No is the Answer :)
If I follow your question you might be interested in how the the Ideal gas law describes gases.
PV=nRT
This equation looks at how (V)Volume, (P)Pressure and (T)Temperature are related With an amount of a matter.


Write to rails console

Question: When I want to try or debug smthing I run rails console and do some stuff there. I can print some text or variables from code by raising exception with raise "blablabla".
Question: How I can just write to rails console without exception raising (and obvious breaking code execution) like a simple logger.info "blah"?
Comment: puts "blah" ? this should work ;]
Answer: As other have said, you want to use either puts or p. Why? Is that magic?
Actually not.  A rails console is, under the hood, an IRB, so all you can do in IRB you will be able to do in a rails console. Since for printing in an IRB we use puts, we use the same command for printing in a rails console.
You can actually take a look at the console code in the rails source code. See the require of irb? :)
Answer: puts or p is a good start to do that.
p "asd"       # => "asd"
puts "asd"    # => asd

here is more information about that: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.3/ARGF.html
Answer: I think you should use the Rails debug options:
logger.debug "Person attributes hash: #{@person.attributes.inspect}"
logger.info "Processing the request..."
logger.fatal "Terminating application, raised unrecoverable error!!!"

https://guides.rubyonrails.org/debugging_rails_applications.html
Answer: In addition to already suggested p and puts — well, actually in most cases you do can write logger.info "blah" just as you suggested yourself. It works in console too, not only in server mode.
But if all you want is console debugging, puts and p are much shorter to write, anyway.

Write to rails console


Can we use more than one timer when programming an Atmega32/16?

Question: I tried to do a simple program using the ATmega16 microcontroller, the program is to toggle two LEDs the first one by using timer0 interrupt and the other using timer2 interrupt.
Comment: If you put them on correct pins, you can setup timers to toggle them without any software handling. Also yes, you can have more than one ISR and even all the timers running at the same time
Answer: Yes, we can.
(stackexchange wants the body of the answer to be at least 30 characters, so I have to add some filler. Truth is, for answering the question as asked, there is nothing more to say.)
Answer: Yes, you can. However there is one thing to note:
Only one ISR can run at once.
That means that if one LED wants to toggle while the other one is in the process of toggling it will have to wait until that first ISR is finished before it can toggle.
For simple LED toggling that won't be noticeable, but it's something you need to bear in mind if you are doing multiple things that require precise timing.


Is it possible to force the MacBook Pro HDMI output to specific resolution/refresh rate?

Question: I have a MacBookPro11,2 connected via HDMI to a 4K television. I would like to try driving the display at various resolutions and frequencies, to see if that might alleviate some problems with signal stability. However the Displays prefpane only offers me a list of "scaled" resolutions, all of which are interpolated up to 4K, meaning the HDMI signal and monitor are still operating at 4K. Is it possible to foce the HDMI output to a specific (lower) resolution/refresh rate?
Comment: According to the [specs](http://westinghouseelectronics.com/products/4k-ultra-hdtv/42-55/wd50uc4300/) it supports everything from 480i to 4K
Comment: What resolutions does the TV support?
Comment: Sadly the vendor (Westinghouse) doesn't provide anything approaching technical specs for the display (actually made by Avision Technology Changzhou) model WD50UC4300. It claims the HDMI input supports "Up to 4K" which would suggest it can accept e.g. a 1080-line signal.
Answer: The answer is: Yes, this is possible.
I found a piece of trialware called SetResX that lets you set arbitrary real resolutions on the HDMI output, and it works!
I also found a video tutorial here that explains how to do that yourself with a substantial bit of effort, and without the nice UI, but I haven't tried that method.
Comment: SetResX works by modifying a system file. When SIP is enabled, that hack is not possible. If you're ok with not having SIP enabled, then use SetResX.
Comment: I have SIP enabled and SetResX still works for me.
Comment: Ok. You might not be using custom resolutions. See https://www.madrau.com/support/support/srx_1011.html for author's own information. "Beginning with El Capitan, System Integrity Protection does not allow SwitchResX to modify this file."
Answer: Additional answer, to combine with @ruief's answer to use SwitchResX (which I agree works really well, having found it from @ruief's answer and tried it!):

Be sure to use a Mini DisplayPort (i.e. thunderbolt) to DisplayPort connector, not an HDMI to HDMI connector - you will likely find a lot more available resolutions; namely, everything that the monitor and MacBook can support which is higher resolution than 1920 x 1080 (aka 1080p)

I am not sure if the above is different between MacBooks? It made a huge difference on my MacBook Pro Retina 13-inch Late 2012; adding genuine resolutions (i.e. as reported by the monitor's OSD, not just scaled displays in other resolutions) up to 2560 x 1600 60Hz - which just weren't there with the HDMI cable.
You might also want to check out this article by Stephen Foskett, which recommends enabling MST-mode on the monitor itself to access even higher resolutions on older MacBooks. However, in my own case I can report that I did not have to enable MST, and that I did eventually get a perfectly usable 4k (3840 x 2160) 27Hz (!) mode (genuinely, as reported by the OSD of the monitor itself) working on my Late 2012 Intel HD Graphics 4000 MacBoo Pro with an ASUS VP28U 4k monitor!!! Definitely no way that could have been achieved without SwitchResX!
Finally, it's also worth noting that another tool, simpler to use than SwitchResX and without the ability to define new modes, but still with the ability to show the 'hidden' resolutions, is RDM which can be installed via a download link from the GitHub page, or via Brew (brew install avibrazil-rdm).
Comment: NB If anybody wants to point it out, yes, I'm not 100% answering the question. But I am pointing out that an assumption in the question (that you should use HDMI for this) may be shooting the questioner - and anybody else going down the same road, as I was before - in the foot, since using HDMI is NOT the optimal way to get control over the MacBook Pro's display output!
Answer: According to Apple, connecting your 4K TV to your HDMI port is only supported at either 3840x2160 or 4096x2160 resolutions.

You can use 4K displays and Ultra HD TVs at the following resolutions
  and refresh rates via the built-in HDMI port of your Mac:

3840x2160 at 30 Hz refresh rate
4096x2160 at 24 Hz refresh rate (mirroring is not
  supported at this resolution)

Per the specs of your TV, it supports 480i to 4K resolutions on HDMI.  It also has PC input (VGA):

Compatible Modes

TV Tuner: NTSC/ATSC
Component: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080P
HDMI: 480i, 576i, 480P, 576P, 720P, 1080i, 1080P,
  3840×2160/30Hz, 3840×2160/60Hz
PC: SVGA, XGA
Optimum Resolution: 3840x2160

If you want to get lower resolutions I recommend connecting to the VGA port on your TV (per the specs, it has a VGA port and using an HDMI to VGA adapter to drop the signal resolution.
Comment: The hardware in the MacBook Pro is totally capable of driving the HDMI port at lower resolutions, as long as the display supports them. The limitation is strictly in software, specifically in how they've dumbed-down the Displays prefpane from earlier versions. In any case, the answer turns out to be yes, you can use the Mac to drive the 4K display at lower resolutions. See my self-answer.


wrongly tagging

Question: Does the community pay lot of attention to tags? And what happens if a question is wrongly? What does it cost me? If it costs me nothing shouldn't the community take a look at it, because I for instance, am often lazy looking for already created tags that relevant to my question. This is often due to the recurrence of the characters typed in the tag field. Example, 'sin' will appear as 'sinsinsinsinsinsinsin' and in the end, there is an alert of characters more than 25. I struggle with this everytime with my phone opera mini before some magic happens. Who else uses the phone version, he will see what am talking about. I know nothing concerning programming, etc. So please reply in raw language.
PS: had the same problem with this very question. Difficult to add the tag 'bug'.
Answer: You as a community member are responsible for tagging your questions appropriately. Tags are the lifeblood of any stack exchange and give important context to your question. You should always try to find at least one (if not more) appropriate tags for your question. If the tags you need are not available then please flag your question or leave a comment asking for the appropriate tag to be added to your question.
One of the ways that community members with sufficient reputation can help the site is by doing any one of the following related to tags:

Retagging questions that are poorly tagged
Adding tags where extra context would help the question
Editing tag wikis and wiki summaries to help give tags more meaning
Spotting duplicate tags and raising them on meta or proposing them in the tag synonym tool.

Usually if you tag a question poorly someone will come along and edit it into shape. If poor tagging becomes a continuous issue moderator actions may be necessary. Bad tags hurt the community, poorly tagging on purpose is not helpful and may result in discipline.
Didn't notice the mobile issues the first time through. what exactly is wrong there? Honestly I've found that SE's mobile site is OK for consuming and maybe writing answers, but it may be far to cumbersome for asking questions.
Just tried out creating a question on my phone, as far as tags, keep an eye on the row immediately above the text box, when you start typing a tag some javascript runs there that will give you options to choose from, tap the correct tag and you're home free.
Comment: Thanks much wax. So is there anything they can do to make it less cumbersome? I also have this question about duplicates. Its also very difficult to check that for questions. Example again is the SIN tag which seems to have
Comment: @Nok, in the non-mobile format there is a list of potential duplicates that show when you type your question title. I haven't tried composing on mobile. The problem with mobile browsing is that there is tons of ajax on these pages, some of which is included in the mobile version. Just tried a new question, the dupe detector is not active on mobile, however, I will add something about tags.
Comment: I also noticed that chat is just impossible as it requires flash player. Skype chat mobile enables messages to pop the moment it is sent. Yahoo messenger also allows you to refresh the page in order to see the newest message. Now i cannot use this privilege untill I get a PC. That notwithstanding, I love the site and am glad to be addicted to this and not facebook.
Comment: @Nok no, SE chat requires HTML 5, I chat just fine on my phone with the default android browser. Its not good, but I can do it.
Comment: What do I do then? Am using sony ericsson k800i with opera mini. I click on chat and I see 'Flash 8 is not installed. Get flash'. But i think I can manage with that although sometimes I  need a one-on-one help. Yet, I know cannot turn the comment area into chat like am wishing now.
Comment: huh, maybe you do nee flash...at least for browsers that don't support HTML 5...can you upgrade your browser or add flash?
Comment: and meta is a bit different, you're here for support and chat isn't working, its ok to extend the discussion a bit.
Comment: @ Wax alright then, forgive me cos am not IT inclined like most guys on this site but I'll try your suggestion and see.
Thanks so much for your quick responses. You've been helpful. You should be more than a moderator, lol.
Comment: nope, just a mod around here. Also I'd say that's probably as far as I can go to help you out there. If you are still having trouble try sending an email to the SE team. (use the contact us link at the bottom of any page)

wrongly tagging


Setting 6x6 posts in concrete

Question: We are  building a pergola-swing with two 6x6 posts as the main supports. The posts are to be set in a 12" diameter sonotube footing, 36" deep. I am unsure as to how much concrete to buy being that there is only about a 3" gap around after the post is in.
I have calculated the volume of the cylinder (4071.5 cubic in.) as well as that of the post(1089cubic in.)
I took the volume of the cylinder and subtracted the volume of the post to get a volume of 2982.5 cubic in
Than I determined that a 50lb bag of concrete is 648 cubic inches. (.375x1728=648)
2982.5cu in/648cu in=4.6--> 5
Based off my calculations shown above, I figure I would need 5 bags per post x 2 posts for a total of 10.
Just looking for someone to look over my work and verify it for me.
Thanks,
-Nick
Comment: What torque will the swing apply to the soil and how much shear stress/strain will that yield?  You can always take back extra concrete bags.  What did you assume?
Comment: A much taller swing 10', made of 4"D steel plumbing as an inverted U set in a 6"D x 3' deep concrete makes an excellent sturdy swing with minimal effort.
Answer: Your math looks right on. I couldn't verify the concrete but it looked pretty similar to other stuff I've used.
The 12" Sonotube seems small for a 6x6 post. Their site recommends three time the post width so that would mean an 18" Sonotube. you might want to look into that. that means you have to do your calculations for concrete over again.. lol

Setting 6x6 posts in concrete


Google map showing developer mode only?

Question: Google map showing developer only how to fix it?
Google map
Map api
Map api code
Comment: You need to add a valid API key to the request for the API.
Answer: Google Maps is no longer free. You have to associate a credit card so that you can get billed if your site has requests that exceed the $200 credit they give you monthly for free. That is why you get the watermarked maps.
For more information, see: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/pricing/
Update: A common problem with the new billing system is that you now have to activate each API separately. They all have different pricing (some are even free), so Google makes a point of having you enable them individually for your domain. I was never a heavy user of Google Maps, but I get the feeling that there are many more APIs now than there used to be.
So if you're still getting a restricted usage message after you've enabled billing, find out what API you need exactly for the features you want to offer, and check if it's enabled. The API settings are annoyingly hard to find.

Go to this link: https://console.developers.google.com/apis/dashboard.
Then you select your project in the dropdown.
Go to library on the left pane.
Browse the available APIs and enable the one you need.

Google map showing developer mode only?


wchar_t pointer

Question: What's wrong with this:
wchar_t * t = new wchar_t;

t = "Tony";

I thought I could use a wchar_t pointer as a string...
Comment: possible duplicate of [What is wrong with this code?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3080137/what-is-wrong-with-this-code) or http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1577765/why-must-a-pointer-to-a-char-array-need-strcpy-to-assign-characters-to-its-array
Answer: Your code has two issues.
First, "Tony" is a pointer to a string of char's.  L"Tony" is the appropriate wide string.
Second, you allocate a single wchar_t via new, then immediately lose track of it by reassigning the pointer to Tony.  This results in a memory leak.
Comment: To expand on Michael's explanation, the correct syntax would be `wchar_t* t = L"Tony";`.  This would declare a pointer and initialize it to point to the static (wide) string "Tony".
Comment: The syntax Should actually be `wchar_t const* t = L"Tony";`. To see why, consider the statement `*(t+1) = L'i';`
Answer: A pointer just points to a single value. This is important.
All you've done is allocated room for a single wchar_t, and point at it. Then you try to set the pointer to point at a string (remember, just at the first character), but the string type is incorrect.
What you have is a string of char, it "should" be L"Tony". But all you're doing here is leaking your previous memory allocation because the pointer holds a new value.
Rather you want to allocate enough room to hold the entire string, then copy the string into that allocated memory. This is terrible practice, though; never do anything that makes you need to explicitly free memory.
Just use std::wstring and move on. std::wstring t = L"Tony";. It handles all the details, and you don't need to worry about cleaning anything up.
Comment: IMO the most correct answer and, with using `std::wstring`, the best advice.
Answer: Since you are a C# developer I will point out a few things c++ does different.
This allocates a new wchar_t and assigns it to t
wchar_t* t = new wchar_t

This is an array of constant char
"Tony"

To get a constant wchar_t array prefix it with L
L"Tony"

This reasigns t to point to the constant L"Tony" instead of your old wchar_t and causes a memory leak since your wchar_t will never be released.
t = L"Tony"

This creates a string of wide chars (wchar_t) to hold a copy of L"Tony"
std::wstring t = L"Tony"

I think the last line is what you want. If you need access to the wchar_t pointer use t.c_str(). Note that c++ strings are mutable and are copied on each assignment.
The c way to do this would be
const wchar_t* t = L"Tony"

This does not create a copy and only assigns the pointer to point to the const wchar array
Answer: What this does is first assign a pointer to a newly allocated wchar_t into t, and then try to assign a non-wide string into t.
Can you use std::wstring instead? That will handle all your memory management needs for you.
Comment: @Pavel: That is very wrong. wstring is `typedef`'ed as a `basic_string` and exists on *every* compliant C++ system/toolchain.
Comment: @Pavel: §21.2/2: "The header `` also defines two specific template classes `string` and `wstring` and their special traits."
Comment: @Pavel Radzivilovsky wstring is standard (at least the cppreference says it is http://www.cppreference.com/wiki/string/start and all wstring wstringstream,wcin,... classes work with g++) the only thing here could be microsoft not implementing the c++ standard.
Comment: wstring only exists in MSVC. It's not standard.
Comment: They did implement a fairly-standard `wstring` back in '98, in their VC6 release. More recent versions have removed some minor non-compliances in their `wstring` implementation. (The most important was that `wchar_t` was a typdef in VC6)
Answer: you can, its just that "Tony" is a hardcoded string, and they're ANSI by default in most editors/compilers. If you want to tell the editor you're typing in a Unicode string, then prefix it with L, e.g. t = L"Tony".
You have other problems with your code, your allocation is allocating a single Unicode character (2 bytes), then you're trying to point the original variable to the constant string, thus leaking those 2 bytes.
If you want to create a buffer of Unicode data and place data into it, you want to do:
wchar_t* t = new wchar_t[500];
wcscpy(t, "Tony");

Comment: The size of a wchar_t is compiler specific and may be as small as 1 byte and as large as 4.
Answer: this is completely wrong.
There's no need to allocate two bytes, make t to point to them, and then  overwrite the pointer t leaking the lost memory forever.
Also, "Tony" has a different type. Use:
wchar_t *t = L"Tony";
IMHO better don't use wchars at all - See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1049947/should-utf-16-be-considered-harmful
Comment: Also a wchar_t isn't necessarily two bytes.  In the version of gcc I'm using a wchar_t is 4 bytes, and the standard says it's compiler specific.  It can even be a single byte.

wchar_t pointer


USART reception problem in PIC16F877A

Question: Receive interrupt flag (RCIF) is not getting cleared even after reading the RCREG (several times!). Because of this I could not receive further data. How to get rid of this problem?
PIC16F877A
Comment: You might have an Overrun Error in which case you should reset the receive logic: `CREN = 0; CREN = 1;`
Answer: How do you know that RCIF isn't getting cleared?  Because your perfect program won't run and the only possible explanation is that the hardware must be wrong?
As m.Alin said, a overrun error requires complete resetting of the receiver, but that can't happen due to receiving a single character.  Set up a test so that you can send single characters to the PIC and see how it handles them.  Then you can walk thru your code and see what it's messing up.
Are you using interrupts?  If so, there are several things you could have messed up in the interrupt routine independent of the UART.  To see something work initially, write a simple polling loop that looks for RCIF, reads RCREG, and writes the result to a port register or something.  Have it toggle a pin everytime is receives a character so you can tell if that is happening at the expected time.
Some likely errors are that you didn't set the bank correctly to access PIR1 or RCREG.
Answer: the FERR bit must be read
before reading the RCREG.
Comment: Can you give us some more information, this currently does not meet our quality guidlines, can you give some information on what all needs to be set or the symptoms of this issue would be.

USART reception problem in PIC16F877A


Amazon Lex - Manually stopping a conversation

Question: I have created a NLP Chatbot using Amazon Lex. Is there a way to manually stop the voice conversation while it is in-progress?
I tried calling the
conversation.reset() method
defined in the javascript file (aws-lex-audio.js) provided by Amazon, but it is not working.
Answer: If your goal is to only restart the conversation, you can change the UserId value and the next request would start a new conversation.


Chi square test of homogeneity for histogram comparison

Question: I have two algorithms that simulate some process. The result of each algorithm run is a histogram of proportions of produced simulated entities, where each bin represents one type of objects. I need to compare the "average histograms" (per bin average proportions over multiple algorithm runs) for both algorithms in order to reason about their equivalence. I believe the chi square test of homogeneity is one possibility. However, while the counts/proportions across the two histograms are independent (one algorithm does not affect the other), the counts within groups are not (completely) independent. For instance, the entities being counted interact in a simulation so a higher count of one type of entity may result in a lower count of another type of entity. In short, the intra-group independence assumption does not hold.
My question is whether the chi square test of homogeneity is still applicable in this case and, if not, what other test should I use to compare the histograms. Should I instead use some kind of multiple paired t-test (one test per bin), which would also account for the variance?
Answer: You need a Multinomial test.
This is the test of the null hypothesis that the parameters of a multinomial  distribution equal specified values.
The multinomial distribution models the probability of counts for a fixed number of independent trials each of which leads to a success for exactly one of a fixed number of categories. With each category having a given fixed success probability, the multinomial distribution gives the probability of any particular combination of numbers of successes for the various categories.
(Above text is freely adopted from Wikipedia.)
PS. Do you really need a quantitative rejection of the null hypothesis? Repeat your simulations very often and then plot the differences between them per bin. Maybe all doubts vanish already.


Why did Starship separation fail?

Question: After seeing the live stream: https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test I was curious why the separation failed . The first stage went normally. Then it failed to separate. After that it started to spin and the self destruct signal was sent. What went wrong with the separation?
Comment: **Comments have been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/145695/discussion-on-question-by-the-rocket-fan-why-did-starship-separation-fail); please do not continue the discussion here.** Before posting a comment below this one, please review the [purposes of comments](/help/privileges/comment). Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an [answer](/help/how-to-answer), on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.
Answer: I think we have an answer now from Musk's post-flight Twitter Space (timestamp of 22m27s included in link).  This answer leans heavily on the Whisper Transcript posted on the NSF forums.
Separation was never commanded.  The vehicle wasn't in a safe position to send Starship on its way.

Elon Musk:
And it got pretty close to stage separation.
So if we had maintained thrust vector control and throttled up, which we should have, because we needed to compensate.
We'd lost too many engines, so we should have throttled up the remaining engines to make up for the missing ones.
But if we'd throttled up the remaining engines and maintained thrust vector control, we would have made it to staging, which would be cool.
So that's our goal for the next flight, is make it to staging and hopefully succeed in staging and get to orbit.
So I think we've had a decent shot at getting to orbit with the next flight.

Tim Dodd:
Did the booster command separation, did it actually try letting go of Starship and it just couldn't because of something? Or did it not even get that far in the program?

Elon Musk:
No, unfortunately it did not get to the point where it would do separation.  One could argue that at the point at which the booster is kaput, the ship may as well just take off and keep going.  But the problem is that we have a very precise targeted entry point in the Pacific.  So the ship really wouldn't have the capability of reaching that target point.

Tim Dodd:
You wouldn't want it re-entering over Africa or something and then just touching down randomly.

Elon Musk:
Exactly. So it would only be worth really starting the ship if the ship is able to complete its mission and reach its targeted landing point just west of Hawaii.

Why did Starship separation fail?


Is this a shopping or list question?

Question: The billing software I use to keep track of my hours/clients/invoices etc. is no longer supported by the manufacturer, and I have to find something else. Is it off-topic here to ask for a suggestion? I could swear I had seen this question here already, but I'm not finding it.
Comment: [This answer](http://meta.graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/a/24/1976) seems to contain the conventional wisdom.
Answer: I see you made the post already, but just for future reference:

The answer Abby links to is pretty old and dusty, but I think it still holds true today. As long as the recommendation question ties in with design (even on the business side of things) then I think the question has a welcome place in our community and can be categorized under software-recommendations
Comment: ooh, good, I was looking for tags and didn't see that one. Someone added it already. Thanks! I tried to make the question answerable without being too opinion-based.

Is this a shopping or list question?


Install Vim in Cygwin

Question: I have installed Cygwin on my Windows machine and I have also selected some additional packages as part of my installation (like GCC etc). Now I want to add Vim also to my existing Cygwin setup. What is the procedure to add Vim to my existing Cygwin setup? Or is there some separate binary for Vim in Cygwin which I can untar and install? What is the best option in my current scenario?
Answer: You need to run Cygwin's setup.exe again, and select the packages you want. Vim is not included in the default package.
I've blogged about this, with explicit instructions and a picture: Cygwin setup gotchas | Code and comments
After installing Vim you may find that things just don't seem to be what you are used to. That is because Linux systems usually have a default .vimrc file somewhere. It seems that Cygwin does not. In Vim, run :edit $MYVIMRC to see your .vimrc.
You should get a nice .vimrc from somewhere and place it in your home folder for a better experience. Currently I'm using this one.
Comment: @Alex Sure, `vim` and `vi` are different, but my blog post is about how to install utilities (whatever they are) in Cygwin. I hope it helps. I wouldn't be surprised if it is totally out of date, I haven't used Windows or Cygwin in five years.
Comment: Your blog is about installing vi. I think vi and vim are different
Answer: Run the Cygwin setup.exe and pick additional packages (search for vim), that executable is used to add packages and update existing ones; you should run it once a month to update to latest packages.
Answer: gvim -v

runs vim/vi without GUI, just like the vim improved / enhanced
CygWinX vi is vim minimal and it is a very striped out version of vim
the work around to have a fully working version of it is installing gvim (the graphical X Window one) via setup (cygwin64 - Installation Folder) and use it in command line with a -v option, that runs it without GUI,
you can also make an alias in .bashrc like:
alias vim='gvim -v $1 $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7'

and use it as a regular vim.

Install Vim in Cygwin


Advantage of backward analysis of a circuit over forward analysis in Stim

Question: I'm trying to understand the theory behind how a Stim Detector Error Model is created from a circuit. It is mentioned in the documentation that during analyzing the errors in the circuit, the circuit is analyzed backwards. What is the advantage of a backward analysis as compared to analysing the circuit forwards? Could you give me an example to show this advantage?
Answer: In Stim circuits you declare detectors and observables after the measurements defining them have already happened. This creates a problem when analyzing the circuit forwards: you haven't yet been told where the observables are, so you don't know where they are, so you can't tell yet whether each error will flip an observable or not.
It is still possible to analyze forwards. In the backwards analysis you push the observable and detector declarations backwards through the circuit, to see which errors they touch. You can instead push errors forwards through the circuit, to see which measurements and detectors and observables they affect.  But this creates a performance problem.
A circuit will easily have 100x more error mechanisms than detectors. That's 100x more things to push forwards than you would have had to push backwards. Also, when you push an error forwards, it will not cancel out; inserting an error at the start of the circuit typically flips measurements all the way to the end. Whereas detectors are designed to have small sensitivity regions, meaning they quickly cancel out when being propagated backwards. So not only do you have 100x more things to push around, they will travel 100x farther! That's why Stim doesn't do the analysis forwards; because it'd be ten thousand times slower.
Fixing this tradeoff between analyzing-forwards vs analyzing-fast would require detectors and observables to be declared before their sensitivity regions instead of after. For example, if Stim circuits required you to annotate the resets that detectors/observables were about to be prepared by, then the necessary information would be present for doing a fast forward analysis. This would be pretty beneficial honestly, since it would allow you to produce the DEM in a streaming fashion as the circuit executed.
Comment: @curiousquantum Observables propagate by the exact same rules as errors, so you track observables backwards as if you were solving for where errors came from in the previous step. More simply, moving an observable backwards through an operation is equivalent to propagating an error forwards through its inverse. This logic is packaged up in `stim.PauliString.before` and `stim.PauliString.after`.
Comment: Awesome, thanks very much!
A small follow-up question: I understand the rules of propagating an error through a circuit, but how does one propagate a detector (backwards) through a circuit?


How to find Mac OSX UID from Ubuntu

Question: How do you view Mac OSX user id without having to boot into OSX? I can mount the drive, but I can't find the UID for my user, which would hopefully enable me to access files without being root.
Answer: You can just check who owns your home directory, using stat /mnt/Users/weberc2 for example. This is the UID that actually matters, anyway.
Comment: That's helpful, but I would like to know the UID of my account as well, in case they are different. I already figured that out and posted the corresponding answer. Thanks for your assistance!
Comment: They are almost never different; files that you create are owned by you.
Comment: Yep. Long story, but my circumstances required me to check both. I voted up your answer because it was helpful.
Answer: I found my answer here. This is the UID that's tied to the user account.
According to this article, the user information can be found in this file
/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/{user-name}.plist

I verified and the UID was at the bottom of the file, in my case. There's also some business about a generateduid, but that's not what you want, so ignore that.

How to find Mac OSX UID from Ubuntu


Checking for code changes in all imported python modules

Question: Almost every Python web framework has a simple server that runs a wsgi application and automatically reloads the imported modules every time the source gets changed. I know I can look at the code and see how it's done, but that may take some time and I'm asking just out of curiosity. Does anyone have any idea how this is implemented?
Answer: As the author of one of the reloader mechanisms (the one in werkzeug) I can tell you that it doesn't work.  What all the reloaders do is forking one time and restarting the child process if a monitor thread notices that one module changed on the file system.
Inline reload()ing doesn't work because references to the reloaded module are not updated.
Answer: reload() does not work. "Reloading" is usually implemented by forking.
Implementing "real" reload() is extremely difficult and even the most serious attempt, twisted.python.rebuild isn't perfect.


Setting up rsyslog filter

Question: I am writing something and I wanted to take advantage of Linux API for logging, I wanted to put the logs of my app to different files, so I added those lines to rsyslog.conf
if $programname == 'RearWindowDaemon' then /var/log/RearWindowDaemon.log
if $programname == 'RearWindow' then /var/log/RearWindow.log

but something is not working, even with this simple code:
int main()
{
openlog("RearWindow",0,LOG_LOCAL0);
syslog(LOG_ERR,"some err");
syslog(LOG_ERR,"other err");
return;
}

I get the logs to /var/log/syslog and not to /var/log/RearWindow.
Should I do anything more? I am using XUbuntu 11.10 if it matters.
Answer: Probably it's late a bit. But what I can understand, you should compile your code such that it produces the binary with name 'RearWindow'. $programname checks if logs are coming from a process with the specified name not that the log contains the string 'RearWindow'.  Hopefully this helps.

Setting up rsyslog filter


Books exploring economics of Leisure and free time?

Question: One I found already is "Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict" by Boushey, what are some other books I could read about this topic?
Answer: I believe the "Handbook on the Economics of Leisure" would be a good starting point for you.

This interdisciplinary Handbook combines both mainstream and heterodox
economics to assess the nature, scope and importance of leisure
activity. Surprisingly, the field of leisure economics is not, thus
far, a particularly integrated or coherent one. In this Handbook a
wide ranging body of international scholars get to grips with this
issue, taking in the traditional income/leisure choice model of
textbook microeconomics and Becker's allocation of time model along
the way. They expertly apply economics to some usually neglected
topics, such as boredom, sleeping and social networking which
encourages a move towards an integrate field of economics of leisure.
Contributions from further afield by Veblen, Sctivosky and Bourdieu
also feature prominently.

Applying a mix of theoretical and empirical work, it is a nice read for undergraduates as well as general public interested in Economics.

Samuel Cameron (ed.), 2011. "Handbook on the Economics of Leisure," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13469.


How can I securely mount a ceiling lamp where no box exists?

Question: Have a plaster ceiling that will not hold a heavy 5kg lamp.There is a ceiling rose and a hole for wires. The only alternative i can think of is drilling 6 or so heavy duty screws (through the 4 inch hole) into the floor boards above the plaster ceiling. These floor boards are pine and about an inch thick. Will i get enough purchase to carry the weight?
Comment: Those screws are called lag screws... But attaching the electrical ceiling box to the bottom of the upstairs floor boards is the wrong way of doing this.
Comment: there aren't joists that you can attach to?
Comment: Definitely don't go into the underside of floor boards; future homeowners may decide to rip up that floor and get an unpleasant surprise.
Answer: Nik, you need to install a piece of lumber (or some such support member) that is securely attached to joists, that spans the location where you want to attach the fixture. They make some ready-to-install gadgets for this also:
Comment: It's worth noting that this type of device expands mechanically and punctures the joist to create a suspended system. That's not apparent from the answer or the drawing.
Answer: The lamp must not be attached to the ceiling.  It must be attached to an electrical junction box. That box, in turn, needs to be screwed or bolted to joists or other framing items in the ceiling. So far as I know, it's not only risky but violates code to mount either the lamp or electrical boxes to plaster/drywall, etc.
Comment: You *can* attach electrical boxes directly to plaster/drywall if they are designed and approved for that use... not to say that would be appropriate in this scenario though.


Encouraging students to be more social with each other via course wall exchanges

Question: I find that students do not always use the course walls to talk to each other.  I want to help them be more social, but don't necessarily want to tie this to class participation grades.  I want them to create a sense of connection with each other, foster peer support, and decrease some of their dependence on me as the instructor.  What are some creative ways that others have succeeded at making the course walls a robust and vibrant social and learning space?
Comment: Course walls are online message boards, yes? Or something else? I have never heard of a "course wall" before.
Comment: Are you sure that communication is not happening outsider the classroom without you knowing it? I found it pretty challenging to make them talk outside the class time on a wall with no any grade associated with it.
Comment: @Penguin_Knight having them post on the course wall or whatever, ensures that students who may have issues are getting them addressed. It may not be the best avenue, but it will help the instructor gauge performance, participation, and mastery, which is beneficial for improving teaching and learning experience.
Answer: One idea that I have employed with adult learners, is to gently redirect them when the opportunity arises. For example, if a student asks me a question that I know is relevant to other students, and also doesn't require my decision making skills, then I will ask them to post that on the wall, and to address it to their colleagues. Then, to keep things moving, I might also encourage one of their peers to respond.I might pick another classmate that I know (or I might guess) has a certain POV on the question posted. To everyone else, this "crafted discussion" is inspiration, and shows a certain level of activity. Yes, it is contrived, but it can motivate others to enter into authentic discussion.
Also, a rating system that encourages good answerers to build reputation might help. ;-)


Am I allowed to know spells I can't cast yet?

Question: As a sorcerer, am I allowed to know spells I don't have the spells slots for yet? Reason being, I don't want any more lower level spells and would prefer to have more later game spells.
Comment: It says in the first line i wanted to know if i could cast spells i don't have spells for yet? i am unsure what is unclear about it, its been answer anyway.
Comment: Could you clarify: do you ask about knowing, say, any level 4 spell before level 7, thus, having only level 1-2-3 spell slots? Or about knowing **two** level 4 spells while having only **one** level 4 slot?
Answer: No, you can only learn spells of a level that you have spell slots for. From the Sorcerer's Spells Known feature:

The
  Spells
  Known
  column
  of
  the
  Sorcerer
  table
  shows
  when
  you
  learn
  more
  sorcerer
  spells
  of
  your
  choice.
  Each
  of
  these
  spells
  must
  be
  of
  a
  level
  for
  which
  you
  have
  spell
  slots.
  For
  instance,
  when
  you
  reach
  3rd
  level
  in
  this
  class,
  you
  can
  learn
  one
  new
  spell
  of
  1st
  or
  2nd
  level.

However, you've said that your goal here is to stop learning low-level spells so that, later on when you can actually use them, you can have more high-level spells. Fortunately, there is a solution to this problem baked into the class.

Additionally,
  when
  you
  gain
  a
  level
  in
  this
  class,
  you
  can
  choose
  one
  of
  the
  sorcerer
  spells
  you
  know
  and
  replace
  it
  with
  another
  spell
  from
  the
  sorcerer
  spell
  list,
  which
  also
  must
  be
  of
  a
  level
  for
  which
  you
  have
  spell
  slots.

So, right now, you have to learn spells you can cast. However, as you gain levels, you can dump low-level spells in favour of higher-level spells. In this way, you can keep your stock of spells known relevant to you as you level. It also means you can try out spells you're not sure about and get rid of them if you don't like them.
Comment: Is the spell swap limited to one spell per level gain?
Comment: @BradleyUffner Yep, exactly


Server IP is showing Firewall IP

Question: From server 2008 r2, I check "what is my IP address", instead of showing my server IP, it showed my Firewall IP. How to rectify this.
Answer: Most likely you cannot : the typical situation is that your server is on a private subnet behind the firewall, and any outbound traffic to the Internet (such as a "What's My IP" site) is NATed on the firewall to the latter's public IP Address. The website has no way of knowing what your server's original IP was.
Answer: That is correct, it would show your external IP address (this is assuming you are going to www.whatismyipaddress.com)
If you want your internal Ip -

Open command prompt
Type ipconfig

That is unless you are thinking you you have a one-to-one nat setup and its not working? more info is required.

Server IP is showing Firewall IP