Does "gospel-preaching church" have a shared meaning?

Question: Does "gospel-preaching church" have a shared meaning among Christians? What is it supposed to mean, and what are the signs of this "gospel-preaching church"? Is the term a tautology? Or is the negation of the term a way to criticize and slight other types of Christians or denominations that one group of Christians may disapprove of or dislike? If possible, where did this phrase come from, and by whom is this phrase typically used?
Comment: I just want to know what the term means. What a church may do to preach the gospel would fit under the big topic of "gospel-preaching church".
Comment: I like this question...but can you be a bit more specific? Are you referring to a particular church or denomination that officially call themselves "gospel-preaching church" (as in ***First Self Righteous Gospel Preaching Church, Banjoville, TN***) or are you wanting a definition of what a church must do to preach the Gospel? There are many overlapping denominations and sects that effectively lead souls  to Christ. There are also (like David points out in his good answer) many denominations that are "Holier than Thou."
Comment: @ Double U See recent answer, defining the Gospel, and giving a history of the theological conflict that necessitated the phrase, "Gospel-preaching" church. Good question that still remains relevant in modernity. Peace!
Answer: The term is not one that has an official definition across the board.  However, there are two meanings that are generally implied by the phrase.  One is a bit.. inflammatory, even if it's not really "meant to be taken that way".  It is tied up with the idea (common to most Christians) that some Churches are preaching a false "gospel".  (I say it's common to most Christians because if it weren't, we wouldn't have so much division within the umbrella of what's called "Christianity".)  The other is less inflammatory.

Starting with the inflammatory meaning, to get it out of the way:
It's something usually said by mainstream evangelicals, and in typical usage, it means "A church that preaches what my Church preaches.
To clarify that, most denominations agree on the central tenets of Christianity, but there are disagreements on certain points.
 - Some denominations teach a works-based salvation, or faith+works salvation.
 - Others are perhaps unfairly accused of teaching a works+faith salvation message.
 - Some denominations preach a Gospel message at the end of every service, and may include an invitation, while others don't.  (I don't recall any such thing ever occurring in a Catholic or Lutheran service, come to think of it.  Just the fiercely evangelical denominations.)
But typically, when you hear this phrase, it's a standard Evangelical protestant, who is a strong believer in salvation by faith alone.  And they're saying, in effect, "Go ahead and go to a Baptist Church, or an Evangelical Free, or an Assembly of God, even, they all differ in some ways, but they all have the right message on what it takes to be saved.  But don't go to that Catholic Church, they teach that you're saved by obedience to the Church, ordinances, and believe all kinds of wacky stuff like praying to saints and Transubstantiation.  Steer clear of them and stick to the churches that teach the real Gospel message.  And don't even get me started on them Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses.  Go find you a Church that teaches that you're a sinner, that you need to repent and put your faith in Jesus, and trust in that alone!  Don't go to some Church that teaches anything not found in the Bible".
(Again, shorter version, "Go to a Church that teaches what I believe.")

It can also have a less "I'm right, those heathens are wrong" meaning.  It can also simply mean, a Church whose focus is evangelism.
As noted above, I don't recall ever hearing a message about having to repent, put my faith in Christ, and get saved in a Catholic Church.  (They may preach that, but I've just missed it...)  By contrast, every Baptist service, wedding, funeral, or pot-luck I've ever attended has a message, or at least a prayer that does this.  Also, you don't see a lot of Catholics going door-to-door handing out tracts, inviting people out to Church.  I see that in Baptist and other strongly Evangelical Churches (As well as with LDS and Jehovah's Witnesses) all the time.  So in that context, "Gospel Preaching Church" can simply mean a Church whose focus is on sharing the Gospel.
Comment: Who's right and who's wrong may be off-topic on this site, but it isn't in the real world.  The differences in doctrine are significant, and we all believe that the consequences of being wrong are eternal.  It shouldn't be surprising that we put a lot of importance on correct doctrine, and are passionate about those who we believe have incorrect doctrine, and could lead people astray.
Comment: Wow. So much sectarianism in a simple phrase!
Answer: A church sermon can include many topics: history, language, society, morals, ethics, relationships, psychology, and more. None of these things are wrong in and of themselves, and yet if a sermon consists only of these things, that sermon is deficient. A gospel-preaching church will aim to always make the core of their sermons be the Christian gospel, out of which these other topics can be developed and discussed in the context of the gospel.
A gospel-preaching church would also want the gospel to be addressed in all the other things it does too (in its hymns/songs, prayers, bible studies, children and youth programs etc.)
Comment: So, one meaning of "gospel-preaching church" is that the church in question must address the gospel in some way in whatever topic of the sermon.
Comment: I wouldn't say that if it occasionally doesn't make focus on the gospel that means it's no longer gospel-preaching, but it would be exceptional. Sadly there are churches where addressing the gospel would be the exception.
Comment: And though I focused on the sermon, a gospel-preaching church would want the gospel to be addressed in all the other things it does too (in its hymns/songs, prayers, bible studies, children and youth programs etc.)
Answer: My answer has a purely anecdotal basis. Being a "boomer," I am more than a little familiar with the tension which existed in my formative years--the 50s and 60s--between two distinct flavors of ethos within the nationwide Christian church in America.
On the one hand, there were the "social gospelers." These were self-confessed Christians of various mainline (and not-so-mainline) denominations who, like James, the half-brother of Jesus, weighed in on the works-side of the works-faith dichotomy. You know, "faith without works is dead." Call them realists who believe the Gospel should not be about

"Pie in the sky when you die by and by."

To them, the Gospel should make a positive and constructive difference in the life of Everyman and Everywoman in the here and now. Themes such as justice, mercy, compassion, good deeds, the brotherhood and sisterhood of all mankind, and even "All roads lead to Rome if you agree on these themes; but if you don't, then you're a narrow-minded bigot who doesn't deserve to be called a Christian."
On the proverbial other hand were--for want of a better word--the idealists, whose Gospel alone, they believed, had the power to change people's lives from the inside out so that they would quite naturally do what the Gospel requires of them, which is make disciples of those around them so that they in turn can make more disciples, and so it goes until the whole world at least hears the Gospel message at least once and Jesus returns and takes all true believers to heaven. Call them the "truth gospelers." In terms of James's theology, they leaned more toward faith than works, and while they believed good works are a good thing, in order to "count" they needed to be the fruit of conversion and not the fruit of a social gospel which to them was, in the Apostle Paul's words, "another Gospel" (in other words, a spurious Gospel which must be rejected; see Galatians 1:8,9).
Having grown up in the latter camp, I came to resent the "social gospelers" because they--wait for it--did not preach the true Gospel, but a spurious, fake Gospel. "They" preached a Gospel of good works and not the Gospel "we" preach; namely, "For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; not of works lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:8,9).
With 20/20 hindsight, what we failed to do was read the next verse and take it seriously. What fell by the wayside was, "For we [Christians] are [God's] workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10).
What the "social gospelers" failed to do (again, from my side of the tracks) was to read and take to heart the message of verses 8 and 9, with its emphasis on grace--or God's unmerited, undeserved favor to us sinners--and faith, which was also a gift of grace and not just an intellectual affirmation such as "I'm a Christian because I was not born a Moslem in Egypt." Furthermore,  "Faith without works [may be] dead, but works without faith is equally dead," which message goes back to Jesus' teaching that we "must be born again [or born from above]" (John 3:3).
By contrast, the "truth gospelers" failed to combine the best of both worlds; namely,  faith AND works, in an admixture that ignored neither the importance of personal conversion (or being "born again") nor the importance of good works as an entre for presenting the Gospel to the recipients of those good works.
Two sayings come to mind, and they emerged in the decades following the tumultuous and polarizing 60s:

You've got to earn the right to be heard, and

Preach the Gospel; if necessary, use words!

In conclusion, as is so often the case with potentially polarizing issues, it's not so much a matter of either/or, but both/and. Separating faith from works is as inappropriate and as dangerous as combining faith and works in a mixture which suits us and ignores some basic differences between the two. It's not a matter of either preaching the Gospel or fleshing  out the fruit of the Gospel, but it's a matter of both proclaiming the faith and demonstrating the faith in a marriage made in heaven. It's a combination of the best of both worlds, and not one at the expense of the other.
Comment: Wow. Interesting personal anecdote of the religious life in America during the 1950s/1960s.
Comment: @Anonymous: Thank you. As is almost always the case, I enjoyed putting my answer together (and perhaps need to), if only to solidify some ideas which have been floating around in the mush in my head for some time now.
Answer: Definitions "Preaching" is an English word that is translated from either the Greek word that means evangelize or the Greek word meaning herald. It is the act of proclaiming a special decree or announcement.
"Gospel" comes from an old Anglo-Saxon translation of the Greek word for good news.  And the contents of this proclamation is given by Jesus during His ministry in Judea.

And Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom.

The Gospel of the Kingdom is the good news that the King has arrived and has come to establish His Kingdom on Earth.  This was the amazing news of the Magi (at what is now Christmas). Where is He who is born King of the Jews? (Mathew 2:2) And the announcement of the Kingdom of God was a continual topic in Jesus's preaching.
Many of His parables dealt with the Kingdom (Matthew 13). And He defined the Kingdom as a spiritual one that where the Throne of God resides in the heart. Therefore it was "not visible, nor coming with observation" such as the conquering Roman Empire. The last 40 days of Christ's time on Earth was a period of talking about the Kingdom (Acts 1:3)
Notice that later Paul defined the Kingdom as righteous, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Romans 14:17)
Gospel Preaching So a church is a faithful one worth attending if its ministers   are sharing the message of the Kingship of Jesus, and the many topics concerning life in the Kingdom. It is one that emphasizes the task of its citizens (disciples) as being ambassadors for Christ by spreading the Good News (Gospel) of the Kingdom throughout the Earth to all peoples without prejudice or favoritism. (A church, therefore, is inclusive of everyone who is repentant.)
Modern Meaning The Apostle Paul warned of false teachers and false prophets that would---and did---come into local assemblies and teach another Gospel.

I marvel that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ for another Gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the Gospel of Christ. (Galatians 1:6-7)

Modern Advice So today in modern times, when someone advises a young disciple of Christ to "attend a Gospel-preaching" church, they, like Paul, are warning about some ministers who are teaching strange doctrines that don't line up with the original intent of Jesus. The list of these false doctrines are many---and better dealt with on another post. This "warning" is not an exercise in judging, but in using discernment which is legitimate.
But basically, a good Gospel-preaching church is one that maintains the centrality of the Person of Jesus as the only Savior, Healer, Baptizer, and King! And that recognizes that God desires all people to be saved and become citizens of His awesome, heavenly Kingdom!

I do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers: that God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom, and of revelation in the full knowledge of Him.So that you--the eyes of your heart being enlightened--will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints...according to the working of the might of His strength, which He worked in Christ, raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come...and gave Him as head over all things to the churches, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:16-23)

Historical Note From the founding of America, the preaching of the traditional Gospel was greatly influenced by John Wesley (and the Methodist circuit preacher), and Jonathan Edwards. Anglicans and Congregationalists also settled in New England.
But soon there was an influx of philosophical Enlightenment advocates and Deists in the colonies. Thus there was a tension in the offing. By the time the early 1900s rolled in, there was a definite distinction between the traditional churches, on the one hand, and those organizations which preached a Social Gospel. This led to the setting up of the dueling between the Fundamentalists and the Liberal churches. The Fundamentalists who advocated the simple, traditional Gospel, saw Liberalism, which taught the "Social Gospel," as a threat to Christianity.
To many, Liberalism seemed to downplay the unique Deity of Christ, and ignored the supernatural aspects of Christianity...and leaned heavily on man's ability to solve the problems of society.  So it was natural for Fundamentalists to warn young disciples (converts) to join a Gospel-preaching Church.  This was a warning, and not, as some conclude, an attitude of snobbery. (Although it could, and did, degenerate into such an holier than thou attitude in some church groups.)
Applicable Today Liberalism has not disappeared from religious dialogue. Cults have not ceased to lead converts astray. False doctrines have not quit being taught. So the admonition to seek out a Gospel-preaching Church still rings true as a loving bit of advice.
It should be noted that many denominations do preach the original "Gospel of the Kingdom" exalting the Lordship of Christ. "Gospel preaching" can be heard from many pulpits on Sunday. So there is no place for "exclusivity." Although having different nomenclatures, they are all One Body in Christ. (Romans 12:4-7, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, 27-30)


Can I "observe" a "sound" or only a "sight"?

Question: I am sitting quietly trying to see and hear sights and sounds. So I am "observing sights" but am I "observing sounds" or is there another word for "sound" perception?
Comment: Observe sound = note
Comment: Observations include what you hear, not just what you see.  If I were writing student observations and couldn't include what I heard them say and answers they orally gave, that would make those written observations pretty strange.
Answer: Sound perception = to hear. That said, observe is not restricted to physically seeing.
"He observed the law and was a good citizen." is one example I can think of off the top of my head.
"The first Christians continued to observe the Jewish festivals." is another example I found online.
To answer your question, it is not incorrect to say "I am observing sights and sounds."
Observe has a diverse array of usages and meanings. In the future, check a dictionary or thesaurus and provide your research.


What would the port of an airship be called?

Question: Marine ships and boats have ports. Airplanes have airports. In scifi spaceships can have space ports. What would be the airship equivalent in a steampunk world where marine ships are still heavily used? So that avoiding the use of port would keep things non-ambiguous.
Comment: is there a reason an airship wouldn't dock at an air*port*?
Comment: Welcome, if you have a bit of time spare, then check out the [tour] and the [help]. This may well be a part of your fictional world, but it might, in future be best to as for "single word requests" on [english.se] where they are on-topic. I suspect that you already have the best answers that you're going to get here, so voting to close as off topic - not about worldbuilding.
Comment: @Chickensarenotcows Thanks for letting me know. I'm okay with it if a mod wants to migrate this question to English.SE.
Comment: Historically, ports were for ships and airports were for airships (so that would be the best word in my sense). Then, airplanes appeared and used airfields, which became known as "airports". Then, airships disapeared, leaving only airplanes on airports
Answer: I like aerodrome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerodrome

In the early days of aviation, when there were no paved runways and
  all landing fields were grass, a typical airfield might permit
  takeoffs and landings in only a couple of directions, much like
  today's airports, whereas an aerodrome was distinguished, by virtue of
  its much greater size, by its ability to handle landings and take offs
  in any direction. The ability to always take off and land directly
  into the wind, regardless of the wind's direction, was an important
  advantage in the earliest days of aviation when an airplane's
  performance in a crosswind takeoff or landing might be poor or even
  dangerous. The development of differential braking in aircraft,
  improved aircraft performance, utilization of paved runways, and the
  fact that a circular aerodrome required much more space than did the
  "L" or triangle shaped airfield, eventually made the early aerodromes
  obsolete.

Airport implies a runway, as noted.  A blimp does not need a runway and early airplanes might need a variety of takeoff directions according to wind.  A large field suitable for hosting all manner of airships could be (and was!) called an aerodrome.
Answer: It's called an Airship Docking Station.
The top of the Empire State Building was designed as the mooring mast for an airship docking station for Zepplins, but it was never used.  (The real reason was to make it taller than the Chrysler Building.)

Fake photo (The Empire State Building as Airship Docking Station - The New York Times).
Answer: In his 1908 novel "The War in the Air" H. G. Wells refers to them as "aeronautic parks".
Comment: I like this. I think I am going to use it in one particular case as it has a ritzy kind of ring to it. Thanks!
Answer: As it turns out there are many kinds of airships in real life. The most common are airplanes, then helicopters, and there are still a few dirigibles running around (for steampunk, I assume these are the airships you care about). They come to dock and stage from locations that are generally called... drum-roll please... AIRPORTS!!!
Heck the name going around for places for spacecraft to stage from is "spaceport". Maybe not all that exotic - use some of the other excellent answers in this thread for that. However, the actual, factual answer to the question is the mundane airport.
Comment: Potential problems: 1. "airport" seems to have first been used (to refer to something other than a porthole that opens to the exterior air of a ship) in 1919, while "aerodrome" dates back to 1902. 2. an "airport" is a subset of "aerodrome", making it a more specific term where, perhaps, a more general term is wanted.


How to end song at `fine` but after repeating?

Question: I'm transcribing guitar song to tab but facing a problem. As the song has repetitions I wrote tab like this and expect to go like 1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 1 2 1 2 but actually it is  1 2 1 2 3 4 3 4 1 2; song stops at fine without repeating. How can I end song at fine after repeating?
Comment: Are you trying to get some software to behave properly?  If so, please let us know what software it is.
Comment: Repeats are normally skipped after a D.C. But both times, "1 2" gets played. I recommend just writing those 4 measures out.
Answer: All you have to do is change the " DC al fine" to "DC al fine (with repeat)" to be clear of your intentions.
One issue you might encounter is that in bar 4 a DC in a bar with a repeat sign may potentially cause confusion. An easy solution is to add a bar 5 and have bars 4 and 5 be 1st and 2nd endings with the DC on bar 5. That way the potential confusion from the combination of the repeat sign and DC will be eliminated.
In the modern age of digital notation and the ease of copy/pasting it is sometimes better to write something out using more measures and maybe an extra page and try and cut down on excess repeats and road map instructions. It will yield better results when players are sight reading your charts.
Comment: I do not see much of a problem having a D.C. at the end of a repeated section. That is something that happens quite commonly in Trios and such. But your remark about writing it out is really important: Jump marks can cause high amounts of confusion, especially if they are used in such abundance as done in pop music. But on the other hand jump marks can make the score shorter and easier to handle. So it's generally a question of a good eye for aesthetics and clarity.
Comment: I'm not an expert, but I've seen a D.C. at a repeated section many times (e.g. Beethoven Sonata 14.II). I do not know how it is in pop and jazz where such jump marks are used for a lot (which also leads to many cases that are incredibly hard to follow and thus impossible to sightread). I guess this is again something that might be fine in one case and confusing in another one. I've seen jump marks that jump onto a different page for a single measure just to jump back after that one single measure...
Comment: @Lazy I'm not saying it's wrong to put a jump mark at the end of a repeated section, just that it's better not to. People often react to the first thing they see and that can cause someone to skip the repeat. I agree that jump marks are useful if used with a good eye like you say but there are a lot of bad eyes out there! ;)
Comment: @Lazy After so many years I've seem all those things too Lazy, that's why I try and avoid anything that is vague in the least and recommend others do so as well. I've noticed that the biggest time wasters in rehearsals and cause of mistakes in performances seem to be charts with road maps.
Comment: That is a very wise remark ...
Answer: By writing that instruction in the score.   For a live player, you mark it (something like) 'Make repeat after D.C.'
I think this is worth doing, for absolute clarity, even if the coda jump is in a 2X volta section.   The old convention of 'no repeats after a DC' dies hard.
For how to achieve this playback in your particular notation program, you'll have to consult its manual.


Include a webpage inside a div

Question: I have to include a webpage inside my webpage's div. I want somehting like iframe to be done with DIV. Basically, I will be providing a URL to my div and it has to open it inside itself... Do we have something like this in modern HTML? I cannot use frames as some browsers have issues with frames.
Comment: I suspect that you'll have fewer problems using an `iframe` than you will by recreating `iframe` functionality with a `div`. Which browsers are you targeting that have problems using `iframes` (or `frame`s)?
Comment: Couldnt find anything to vote down this is just a simple question because browsers like chrome doesnt allow interframe communications
Comment: Chrome allows interframe communications. It doesn't allow interdomain communications without CORS, but that's according to spec.
Answer: Try using an <object> element:

    <object type="text/html" data="**URL to page**"
            style="width:100%; height:100%; margin:1%;">
    </object>

Comment: Which browsers/versions does it compatible with?
Comment: I get 403 access denied when i use above approach , any possible reasons pleas e?
Comment: See [this table](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/object#Browser_compatibility) about compatibility
Answer: Nope. You can't embed a complete HTML document inside another div element as this is a block level element and W3C has defined what could be included inside it.
But there is a workaround. Follow these steps:

Get the document using ajax (jQuery rocks, use that)
Extract the content of the  element and put it inside your div element
Get all links and script of  element and append them to the  element of your existing pgae.
Comment: I realize this is a year old, but I have the same requirement.  If you use this idea, will you have trouble with `id` attributes?  (You might have the same id on 2 of the pages you are 'combining')  Duplicate id's may mess up the browser and any `js` query code...
Comment: Can someone throw an example on how this is achieved. Total newbie to html/css here :/.
Answer: you should use iframe. that's basically what iframes are for. if you stick with modern browsers in any case they don't have issues with iframes (not more than you'll have to face using div's instead)...
Answer: You can use iframe or if you decide to use jQuery load function (http://api.jquery.com/load/) you need to avoid the cross script scripting problem - you need to create some sort of proxie take a look at this: WebBrowser Control: Disable Cross Site XSS Filtering or another way to process JS in full on HTML
Answer: It should have been in the question itself, but the OP has clarified the reason he does not want to use an iframe is  because interframe communication is not allowed. Well, that's nothing a proxy + postMessage can't solve.
I believe there is simply no way to actually embed a full document within another one, retaining things like separation of styles and scripts and the like, without using frames in some sense.
Answer: This is really an extension to Saeed's response.  To get around cross site scripting issues, you will have to write a script on your own server that does a CURL call for the webpage to be embedded.  Your javascript will then make a call to this script, passing the URL as a GET/POST parameter.
I agree with a lot of other people here that this is a case where you really should just use an iframe...  I believe you can set the iframe with no src tag and manually put the content inside it.  That would mean you don't need to take the steps Saeed suggested to break up the head and body.  However you still need the script I described to get around cross site scripting.
Answer: Actually, I agree with Frédéric Hamidi from above. Just embed an "object" inside a div and reference the URL of the other page in that object.
You can set all the styling for the second page on itself or in a separate CSS file.
That styling gets imported along with the page content without conflicting with the current pages style or scripts.
I tested Frédéric Hamidi's theory on these browsers, all performed just fine.
•   Internet Explorer – v11
•   Microsoft Edge - v 84.0.522.59 (Official build) (64-bit)
•   Google Chrome – v84.0.4147.105
•   FireFox – v79.0
•   Brave – v1.11.104
•   Opera – v69.0.3686.95
•   Safari – v13

Include a webpage inside a div


HttpServlerRequest in iphone

Question: i am a newb in http request. is it possible to request httpservletrequest in iphone sdk if it give me some sample code for it.
Thanks in advance.
Answer: I'm not sure if I understand you right, but for simple HTTP requests I like to use ASIHTTPRequest wrapper.
You'll find sources, samples and getting started guide by a link above.

HttpServlerRequest in iphone


Why does Cylon number 6's back glow in episode 1?

Question: In episode one, when Baltar is seduced by what turns out to be a Cylon in the form of a human, the Cylon's spine glows red and shines through her skin. Was this just a special effect for the benefit of the TV audience? Do any or all of the other human looking Cylons in the 2004 series suffer from this give away indicator?
Answer: I don't believe this is ever specifically given a reason. However there are two occurrences as far as I can recall:
The first is with Baltar and number 6, who are apparently deeply in love.
The next is with Boomer and Helo, who again are both apparently deeply in love.
Since the human Cylons were designed to not be detectable to humans, it seems unlikely that it is in their design for their spines to glow during sex. Potentially the fact that these Cylons were expressing love to humans cause this abnormal appearance to manifest itself.
The most likely explanation is probably as you put it "just a special effect", which is backed up by the wiki, though without reference:

Note: Comments from members of the production crew have since suggested that the only reason the glowing spine was included was that it "looked cool" at the time, and in retrospect, may have been a mistake. According to the novelization, the spines glow in the infrared spectrum, which would mean it would require special optical equipment for it to become visual.
Answer: I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that it wasn't a literal depiction so much as a story-telling device meant for the audience. This show was very serious throughout its run, even grim... they weren't doing goofy stuff and breaking the 4th wall or anything like that, and so I know that it might be difficult for some to accept this as an explanation. However, there is no other explanation here. Even if the glow was biological in origin (some sort of bioluminescence), there would be abnormal tissues detectable by a first year med student and a cursory examination.
I'd like everyone to consider how the scene would be viewed if they hadn't included this special effect: is this woman merely human but a traitor? Perhaps everyone understands that she's a cylon, but they take away some other impression such as that these two are in love/lust or the like. There is alot of room for misinterpretation if they do not emphasize her bizarre nature. If it were a novel, the author has many tools to do this, but with film that simply isn't the case, and sometimes it is necessary to depict something that would not actually be happening if they were describing a factual account of the story.
Comment: +1 to combat the down vote, it definitely seems to be "it looks cool to the audience".
Answer: According to the official novelisation, the glow was into various spectra that couldn't be seen with the naked eye. There's no special indication why her spine was glowing, other than it grew with her "sexual fervor", suggesting a physiological response akin to orgasm.

As their lovemaking mounted toward a climax, the wall behind her was
warmed slightly by a peculiar, nearly invisible light. The doctor
never saw it—and wouldn't have, even if he had been less distracted.
The light was mostly infrared, with just a hint of gamma radiation. If
his eyes could have seen it, they would have seen the glow of fiery
embers, the glow of heating coils. It was a soft glow, but growing in
intensity, growing with the woman's sexual fervor. Indeed, it came
from, and illuminated, the spine of the gorgeous, naked being who was
rocking and bobbing as she made love to Gaius Baltar.
Battlestar Galactica: The Series

The canonicity of this event was addressed by Showrunner Ron Moore in an interview to coincide with the series finale. In short, the "glowing spine" thing wasn't retconned, it just wasn't something that came up again (much).

Q: The glowing red spine (during sex) in the first season. Was it just
abandoned?
Ron Moore: It wasn't really abandoned; we just didn't do a lot more Cylon sex
scenes.
'Battlestar Galactica' finale: interview


What is the correct pronunciation of 辫发?

Question: Google Translate and 查查在线词典 both say 辫发 ought to be biànfǎ, but Baidu says biànfā. What is correct?
Comment: Interestingly, the sound file for iChaCha 查查在线词典 sounds like it corresponds to another variant: biànfà
Comment: oh good catch, I didn't even listen to it.
Answer: According to Xinhua Zidian, the only admitted standard pronunciation currently for 发 (in Mainland) is

fā, various meanings, e.g. "to send out, to dispatch", "to start", "to grow, to expand", "to open, to reveal, to invent", "to show", "to produce, to happen"; and
fà, meaning "hair".

As 发 in 辫发 refers to hair, it should be pronounced biànfà in Mainland China. This is also how I pronounce the word (native speaker).
In Taiwan, as indicated by the other answer, fǎ is correct.
Answer: Depends on region.
This word 辮髮 is quite transparent: 辮 braid + 髮 hair (of the head).
Hence, in standard Taiwan Mandarin, as defined by Ministry of Education there, both characters have a single pronunciation each, and so the word as a whole is pronounced biànfǎ.
On the mainland though, the second one 髮 was defined as being pronounced as fà on its own. This is where 辮髮 is pronounced biànfà; however, I do not see authoritative sources which say this is prescriptively correct, despite it being a common way of pronouncing this on the Mainland.
The character 髮 was merged with 發 fā and underwent character simplification to form 发. As 發/发 fā has become more common, this is where 辮髮 = 辫发 gained its third pronunciation, biànfā, which is the pronunciation on zDic.net.
Comment: I'm pretty sure fā is incorrect and is a computer mistake. Xinhua is almost as precriptive as it gets but I should check Modern Chinese Dictionary to be sure (unfortunately not by my hand though).

What is the correct pronunciation of 辫发？


Base of Fine Uniformity

Question: How to show that all normally open covers form a base for the fine uniformity $\mu_F$? If $\mathcal{B}$ is the collection of all normally open covers, we first  need to show that $\mathcal{B}$ is a subcollection of $\mu_F$. Then we have to show that every $\mathcal{U}$ in $\mu_F$ is refined by some cover from $\mathcal{B}$. How to go about the proof?
Comment: I fleshed out the Willard proof some more. Time to accept / upvote some answers maybe?
Answer: Following Willard, General Topology, 36.15 (which is what you seem to be doing as well):
some definitions recap:
A sequence $(\mathcal{U}_n)_{n \ge 1}$ of covers of $X$ is said to be a normal sequence, when for all $n\ge 1$: $\mathcal{U}_{n+1}\prec^\ast \mathcal{U}_n$.
A cover $\mathcal{U}$ is said to be a normal cover, if there is a normal sequence $(\mathcal{U}_n)_{n \ge 1}$ as above with $\mathcal{U}_1 = \mathcal{U}$, so it can be star-refined as often we like.
Note that by the definition of covering uniformities, all covers in a covering uniformity are normal covers. Such covers need not be open and they often aren't.
A family of covers is called a normal family, if every member of the family is star-refined by some member of the family. The set of members of a normal sequence is a normal family. Any normal family of covers generates a unique smallest uniformity containing that family, and then this family is called a "subbase" for the generated uniformity.
An open cover $\mathcal{U}$ of $X$ is said to be "normally open" when there is a normal sequence $(\mathcal{U}_n)_{n \ge 1}$ of open covers with $\mathcal{U}_1 =\mathcal{U}$. Such a cover is clearly normal but in a special way, as it can be star-refined by open covers (instead of just covers).

We start in a uniformisable space $(X,\mu)$ with induced topology $\mathcal{T}_\mu$. Let $\mu_F$ be the corresponding "fine" uniformity,
which is the largest (by inclusion) covering uniformity, that induces $\mathcal{T}_\mu$. We constructed it here
So let $\mathscr{B}$ be the collection of all normally open (in said topology)
covers of $X$.
Now take some (fixed for now) normally open $\mathcal{U}$ from $\mathscr{B}$, and construct the promised normal sequence of open covers $(\mathcal{U}_n)_{n \ge 1}$ with $\mathcal{U}_1 = \mathcal{U}$.
Then in this answer I showed that $\mu \cup \{\mathcal{U}_n \mid n \in \mathbb{N}\}$ is a normal family that induces a uniformity $\mu'$ such that $\mathcal{T}_{\mu'} = \mathcal{T}_\mu$.
As $\mathcal{U} \in \mu'$ and $\mu'$ is a uniformity inducing $\mathcal{T}_\mu$, we also know $\mu' \subseteq \mu_F$ by maximality and so $\mathcal{U} \in \mu_F$.
We have shown (as $\mathcal{U} \in \mathscr{B}$ was arbitrary), that indeed $\mathscr{B} \subseteq \mu_F$.
Now we use the following

Fact: (e.g. Willard, General Topology; 36.7) For any covering uniformity $\mu$, the open uniform covers (i.e. open covers that happen to be members of $\mu$) form a base for $\mu$.

Proof sketch of Fact: let $\mathcal{U} \in \mu$ and let $\mathcal{V} \in \mu$ be such that $\mathcal{V} \prec^\ast \mathcal{U}$.
Then note that $\mathcal{O}=\{\operatorname{st}(x,\mathcal{V}): x \in X\}$ is an open cover of $X$ (in the induced topology) (note that $\mathcal{V}\prec \mathcal{O}$, so that $\mathcal{O} \in \mu$, as required) that refines $\mathcal{U}$.
This Fact implies

Fact 2: every open cover in a uniformity $\mu$ is normally open.

Proof of Fact 2: Let $\mathcal{U} \in \mu$ be an open cover
Proof: Define $\mathcal{U}_1 = \mathcal{U}$.
Having defined $\mathcal{U}_n$ for some $n$, such that $\mathcal{U}_n$ is an open cover from $\mu$, let $\mathcal{V}$ be any cover in $\mu$ such that $\mathcal{V}\prec^\ast \mathcal{U}_n$, which can be done as $\mathcal{U}_n \in \mu$ and then by the above fact there is an open cover $\mathcal{O}$ in $\mu$ such that $\mathcal{O} \prec \mathcal{V}$.
Standard facts about refinements learn us that:
$$\mathcal{O} \prec \mathcal{V} \prec^\ast \mathcal{U}_n \implies \mathcal{O} \prec^\ast \mathcal{U}_n$$
allowing us to go in the recursion by defining $\mathcal{U}_{n+1} = \mathcal{O}$ keeping everything open and in $\mu$, so we can continue. This recursively defined sequence shows that $\mathcal{U}$ is indeed normally open.
Now take any $\mathcal{U} \in \mu_F$. Then by the above fact, there is an open cover $\mathcal{O} \in \mu$ refining it. By Fact 2, it is normally open so a member of $\mathscr{B}$. This shows $\mathscr{B}$ is a base for $\mu_F$.

Base of Fine Uniformity


How can I implement a CRF feature function?

Question: It is said that a feature function can represent anything, the first or the last word of a sentence, a capital character and etc. But how exactly can I represent them in such a form: $F_j(x, y)$ or $\sum_i f_j(y_{i-1}, y_i, \bar x, i)$ as explained in this tutorial? Could anyone please help instantiate one in mathematical language?
Answer: In the simplest case, say $p(y|x,w)$ is a Gaussian distribution centered at $x$, $$p(y|x,w)=\frac{1}{Z}\exp(\langle w, F(x,y)\rangle)=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi}\sigma}\exp(-\frac{(y-x)^2}{2\sigma^2})$$
we can interpret the feature function as $F(x,y)=(y-x)^2$, the parameter $w$ is then $-1/2\sigma^2$.
There's more than one way to construct the feature functions in this case, we can also let the feature function produce a vector $F(x,y)=(x^2, xy, y^2)$, then setting the parameter $w=(-1/2\sigma^2, 1/\sigma^2, -1/2\sigma^2)$ will give the same result.

In the case that $y$ is a categorical variable, consider the logistic regression, $$p(y_k|x,w)=\frac{1}{Z}\exp(\langle w, F(x,y_k)\rangle)=\frac{1}{\sum\exp(w_i\phi)}\exp(w_k\phi)$$
the feature function $F(x,y_k)$ should return a N-dimensional vector with phi being the k-th element and 0 elsewhere so that $\langle w, F(x,y_k)\rangle=w_k\phi$.
Answer: In a CRF, for instance, as below, X is a set of observed variables and Y target variables:

Since the $X$ are all observed, a factor $\phi_i (X, Y_i)$ can be any function. And if it is a logistic regression function, then $X$ are just the features and so as any combination or manipulation of them, as we do in simple logistic regression tasks.
For instance(general cases) if we say, $X_1$ should be the same as $X_2$ for $Y_i$ to be a particular state $Y_c$, then we just define it as $X_1=X_2$ as one feature. If it holds the energy between this feature and $Y_c$ is low and the probability is high.


Data analytics in road transportation

Question: What kind of insights can we give from point A to point B transactions. A and B are two places, All I can think of is about descriptive statistics like how many transactions from A and what is count of transactions between places and all.
Comment: do you have timing information when the transaction occur?
Comment: Yes i have date of transaction, can i do something with date time and material moved/vehicle used?
Comment: how many different A's and B's are there?
Comment: around 50k but 700 unique routes. like if A is Pune and B is Nagpur then the same A and B for different prices and different times 300 times.
Answer: You could use the tools from Network Science (1) to model (A,B) as edges in a network. Since you have timing information on the transactions you can reconstruct paths on that network.
Using statistical network analysis you can find for example which points A from your dataset (or nodes in the network) are of importance, as in how many routes lead to that point. For this you'd study a centrality measure (degree centrality, closeness centrality, betweenness centrality, etc.) (2)
Or you can find which points are close together in terms of transactions between them, for this you'd look for community detection or clustering. (2)
You can also look at the timing data, to calculate the intra- and inter- transaction time distributions.
(1): Barabási, A. L. (2016). Network science. Cambridge university press.
(2): Salter‐Townshend, M., White, A., Gollini, I., & Murphy, T. B. (2012). Review of statistical network analysis: models, algorithms, and software. Statistical Analysis and Data Mining: The ASA Data Science Journal, 5(4), 243-264.

Data analytics in road transportation


Where to find Astérisque online?

Question: Is there a place online where one can download papers that have appeared in the Astérisque if "your institution subscribes"? I am especially interested in back issues: Astérisque series published a lot of interesting papers which I would like to read, yet it seems to me the only way to access them is to take a trip to your library and pray that it has them in print. This being ridiculous in 21st century, I wonder if there is a place online with *.pdf versions of the issues...
Comment: For things "available if your library subscribes" you can consult your library...
Comment: Heaven forfend that something is not in PDF
Comment: Asterisque is available from Google Books.  You can download complete copies of books on Google Books using the site http://bookworm.evil.so.  It takes about 10 days, but in the end it gets the job done.
Comment: I'm surprised this question was closed, and astonished that there are two votes to delete. There are several highly upvoted answers, with valuable information. Hands off, please!
Comment: It is horribly organized on google books.
Answer: I requested Mme Hélène Falavard of Numdam some years ago to digitise the old volumes of  Astérisque.  Here is her reply (12/12/2005):

la collection Astérisque n'est malheureusement pas prévue dans notre programme de numérisation car la Société mathématique de France n'a pour l'instant pas donné son accord. Peut-être cela changera-t-il un jour ......

Update 2/6/2017  The whole Astérisque collection is currently being digitised and will appear before the end of this year on the Numdam site. --- European mathematical society
Comment: Do you have a source for that update? That is really excellent news if it is true.
Comment: @sdf see http://euro-math-soc.eu/news/17/06/2/ems-e-news-23-june-2017 and search for Numdam
Answer: The first 180 volumes of Astérisque are now electronically available for free
http://www.numdam.org/journals/AST/
EDIT: now 300+ volumes
Answer: The issue of providing online access to Asterisque is a difficult one. The SMF offers electronic versions of its other journals, and the subscription rates for these has apparently significantly dropped. Asterisque is now the most profitable publication of the SMF and there is a lot of reluctance to join the 21st century and jeopardize this profitability. I agree with Obelisque that the best solution is to buy the old issues, but the ones that are most in demand are also out of print. All of these topics are currently being discussed (electronic versions, reprinting the back issues, ...). It is also not impossible that the Bourbaki seminars will soon be available online, maybe with a five year buffer, as the contract beween Bourbaki and the SMF gives total freedom to Bourbaki.
EDIT : of course, one reason why the standard model for journals does not quite apply to Asterisque is because it's part journal, part book series...
Comment: "It is also not impossible that the Bourbaki seminars will soon be available online, maybe with a five year buffer" I believe they already are, with a ten year buffer (cf my answer).
Answer: One can also buy the volumes; old issues are pretty cheap (when not out of print).
Comment: +1 for the username w.r.t. this question.
Comment: The username had been "Obelisque" before being changed...
Answer: In general the answer is 'no'. There seems to be no offer of the SMF, which produces Asterisque, to buy electronic versions; see the SMF catlogue offering only printed versions.
If however the paper is from a Bourbaki Seminar talk (before 2002) then, yes, one can find this on http://www.numdam.org/ even 'free for all'; this should be a direct link
Comment: The Bourbaki seminars that are available on Numdam are the versions that the authors hand out before their talk. They're not the final versions that are published in Asterisque.
Comment: @Laurent Berger: Could you please back up and or recheck the content of your comment? I doubt what you say is true. I did not check each and every (recent) year, but for example the most recent available definetly seems like the Asterisque version, and not the one distributed before the seminar. (Contiously numbered over the full volume, an SMF and asterisque at the end of pages, the full table of content,...) Perhaps the logo/frontpage on the overview page was confusing? Yet if one clicks through to the years, one gets the asterisque frontpage instead (or for earlier years LNM and so on).
Comment: @quid: yes you're right. In my defense, the "Astérisque" style of 10 years ago looks very much like the "brochure" style of today.
Comment: @Laurent Berger: thanks for the clarification!
Answer: The Asterisque collection has been partially digitised and is now online for subscribers starting from year 2015. See the website of the SMF, which says:

Astérisque : from the year 2015 (and volume 367-368), the series is
  accessible on the SMF server as they are released for subscribed
  members. A volume may be presented component by component (eg article
  by article for the annual Bourbaki volume). Previous volumes (1-366,
  from 1973 to 2014) are offered for sale and are not available online.

and also

The Astérisque series is being digitized by the Mathdoc Cell within its
  Mersenne program: an online publication is planned by 2018. Other
  online releases are being studied, according to modalities to be
  specified.

Where to find Astérisque online?


Road bike headset: the spacer above the stem can rotate but not the ones below, is it wrong?

Question: I checked my bike for play yesterday and found some in the headset when rocking while slamming the front brake. I loosened the stem bolts and top cap then tightened them again. The play in the headset is gone. I just checked the play in the spacers for my own curiosity. I see that that the spacers below the stem have no play, cannot even rotate. The spacer above the stem can rotate quite freely but has no sliding freedom. Does it need more tightening in the top cap? By the way, I do not have a torque wrench, I am tightening by feel and check.
Answer: When the stem is clamped in place, it's enough to keep the headset in place.
The top cap is used only for adjusting headset bearing preload and keeping water and dirt out of steerer tube, so in principle you could even remove it after tightening stem bolts and save a few grams of weight. You could as well tighten it without interfering with headset adjustment if you like.
Comment: If the top cap won't hold the spacer after tightening, I wonder how they managed to set the preload so that the spacers below don't move.
Comment: If the top cap won't hold the spacer even after tightening, OP might need a thicker spacer, or a shim added to the stackup.
Comment: @ojs thanks for the detailed explanation. I took the bike on a ride today and it felt really good. I purposely grabbed the handlebars firmly when climbing and accelerating, and they felt very safe.


Can others see pending close votes?

Question: Can other users see close votes on my question if they haven't reached the threshold to close? If so, does this not bias users to vote to close more often?
Comment: Those that can vote to close can see the current count if there are votes, yes.
Comment: They can see the *number* of close votes, and which category they voted to close as, but not *who* has voted to close (until the question is actually closed).
Comment: @Servy Except in the case of the first-issued `Possible duplicate of x` vote, for whom the close voter's name is attached unless the comment gets deleted.
Comment: @meta.michael Also unless there was already a comment with a link to that question, but yes.
Comment: @Servy there are some other cases where you can see *who* has voted before the question is posted - I'll post an answer
Answer: You can see others' close votes at 3,000 rep, when you can cast your own close/reopen votes.
As for the bias part, I would hope that those who do have this privilege would close/reopen the question on the merits, not because, "Oh, this question needs only one more vote to close it."
Answer: Yes those with rep to close can, and it might.
However remember something important, even the people with close privileges aren't perfect, and seeing what the community thinks can help them learn what is or isn't acceptable.
Comment: Your answer is the same as Makoto's but I am accepting yours because of the idea that the actions of others might dictate what is acceptable (which can be good).
Answer: As the other answers state, those with the vote to close privilege can see the number of close votes a question has attracted and a breakdown of which reasons have been given.
However what hasn't been mentioned thus far is that you can see who has voted to close a question if that vote was cast from the close votes queue, for example on a currently still open question:

Where everyone with a "close" remark has voted to close the question from the review queue.  This is another edge case in a similar category to the automatic duplicate comment (though this will probably be removed very soon).
Comment: Note: That information is only available to those who have already voted while it's still in the review process. It's only made available to everyone once review is completed. Besides, it can be quite difficult for a user without access to the full history to even find those. It'd basically be a game of browsing everyone's profile who's been active on the question and looking for review events, only to find semi-useful information.
Comment: @animuson: Mods have an easy way to get to the review history of a post. Btw, any idea when a user gets to see the full review history? On the sites I mod and MSO I can see it, but on other sites I only see my reviews.
Comment: @Manishearth: You start seeing reviews of everyone once you get the 10k tools.
Answer: There is an entire Close Votes review queue, where users with at least 3k reputation can see questions that have either pending close votes or it doesn't belong here flags.
Once you click "close" in either the question or the review queue, you can see how many users have voted to close for a specific reason.
This should not bias others to vote to close. The queue itself has a Leave Open button; if a sufficient number of users press it, the question disappears from the queue.
Note that there's also a Reopen Votes review queue.
In addition, 10k users can see those and some other pending flags inside the moderator tools. They can either vote to close or cast an invalid flag flag.
Without those tools, moderating the currently 4,500,000 question on Stack Overflow would be impossible. The Close Votes queue alone holds almost 50,000 questions right now.

Can others see pending close votes?


Create an SSH user who only has permission to access specific folders

Question: I installed SSH, but I found if I use my original account to login to Ubuntu, it has too many permissions.
I want to constrain the user to only have permissions for specific folders in Ubuntu. How can I configure such a user?
Answer: This is simple. Just create a new user with its home directory set to the one you need him to have access to (this command must be run under sudo or in root shell):
adduser --home /restricted/directory restricted_user

This will create a user restricted_user, the directory /restricted/directory and then permissions on the directory will be set so the user can write to it. It won't have an ability to write to any other directory by default.
If you have the directory already, you can run adduser command with a --no-create-home option appended and set permissions manually (also with root privileges), like:
chown restricted_user:restricted_user /restricted/directory
chmod 755 /restricted/directory

If you need to make even world-writable directories unaccessible for this user, there are two variants.
1) If you want to provide an interactive shell session to the user, then consider following this manual on creating a chroot jail (in your /restricted/directory).
After that, add the following to your sshd_config:
Match user restricted_user
  ChrootDirectory /restricted/directory

2) If you only need him to copy files between his endpoint of connection and your host, everything is much easier. Add these lines at the end of your sshd_config:
Match user restricted_user
  ForceCommand internal-sftp
  ChrootDirectory /restricted/directory

Subsystem       sftp    internal-sftp

Then comment out the Subsystem   sftp    /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server by placing a hash (#) sign at the start.
After restarting your SSH server (it does not  kill interactive sessions on restart, so it is safe even if you misconfigured something; also, does not close your running session before you have checked that you are still able to log in), everything should work as intended.
Comment: You should write the `Subsystem       sftp    internal-sftp` line in your second example above the `Match` block. Otherwise ssh will print out an error and does not start.
Comment: Spoiler alert: does not work with scp
Comment: I tried , but it seems that i can still cd .. and browse the upper directory. and when I use vi a.txt in the upper directory, it shows:press enter or command to continue, and i can not quit vi
Comment: Everything works fine, except that I have no write permission. How can I set a write permission for this restricted directory. If I use chmod 775, the user can't login anymore.
Comment: Can I use option #2 if the user should only have sshfs access?
Comment: @My-Name-Is you could create a subdirectory and set permissions as 775 on it
Comment: I tried method 2, and got Write failed: Broken pipe when I try to log in.
Comment: Can that `/restricted/directory` be another a directory under another user's home directory? I have the root access of this machine.
Answer: The easiest way to create restricted user that cannot wander off the given directory (e.g., to the upper directory etc), and have a limited/picked set of command to use, is to use a Restricted Shell. Ref:
http://man.he.net/man1/rbash
First, create a symlink called rbash (run as root user).
ln -s /bin/bash /bin/rbash

Then just create a normal user with this Restricted Shell, and set it's home dir to the desired folder:
useradd -s /bin/rbash -d /home/restricted_folder username

Even without the Restricted Shell, if you explicitly do not add this user to sudoer's list, or any special groups, then it will be limited by default.
With the Restricted Shell, the  following  are disallowed or not performed:

changing directories with cd
setting or unsetting the values of SHELL, PATH, ENV, or BASH_ENV
specifying command names containing /
specifying  a  file  name containing a / as an argument to the .
          builtin command
Specifying a filename containing a slash as an argument  to  the
          -p option to the hash builtin command
importing  function  definitions  from  the shell environment at
          startup
parsing the value of SHELLOPTS from  the  shell  environment  at
          startup
redirecting output using the >, >|, <>, >&, &>, and >> redirect-
          ion operators
using the exec builtin command to replace the shell with another
          command
adding  or  deleting builtin commands with the -f and -d options
          to the enable builtin command
Using the  enable  builtin  command  to  enable  disabled  shell
          builtins
specifying the -p option to the command builtin command
turning off restricted mode with set +r or set +o restricted.

These restrictions are enforced after any startup files
Moreover/Optionally, to restrict the user to a limited/picked set of command to use, you can create a .bash_profile read-only to that user, with
PATH=$HOME/bin

and symlink whatever commands you allows into the ~/bin folder to that user:
ln -s /bin/ls /home/restricted_folder/bin/ls
ln -s /bin/mkdir /home/restricted_folder/bin/mkdir
ln -s /bin/rm /home/restricted_folder/bin/rm

etc.
HTH
Comment: i can find any file on the filesystem, including /root directory and i can read these files. Wondering how to further restrict access of seeing anything outside user folder or capturing any network packets or reading /var/log contents
Answer: If you are looking just to hide the contents of folders from a user, eg the home folder names of other users, just set the permissions to 701. The owner can do anything, everyone else can only enter the folder, but can't list its contents or change anything unless they have sudo permissions.
I do this for clients. I make sure the top folder is root-owned, but with 701 permissions, and each subfolder is owned by who I want to be able to manipulate. I just then created a link in their home folder to the new restricted folder.
They can see the path if they "cd .." but have no idea what other files or folders are there.
Comment: Substantially faster to implement, and can be done with a single command
"chmod 701 /my/folder"
Answer:
I want to constrain the user to only have permissions for specific folders in Ubuntu.

This sounds like you want to select the folders this SSH user will have permission to. So, you would not necessarily want to include all world-readable directories on the server.
This is difficult to impossible to achieve with SSH users that you provide with some sort of interactive shell, so that they can execute commands. There were several attempts for this (rbash, scponly, rssh), all no longer considered secure enough and mostly abandoned.
So, instead of providing an interactive shell, you could provide your SSH user with a single command that allows managing files inside your specified directories, and nothing else.
There are several options, depending on which network file access protocol you want to use:
Option 1: SFTP via SSH
Using ForceCommand internal-sftp, as already explained in the answer by whitequark.
Option 2: rsync via SSH
rsync is a faster and more powerful network file access protocol, but not as end user friendly as SFTP. In other words, the GUI options for rsync are quite limited: free Linux options, free Windows option, commercial cross-platform option.
To set this up, follow the recipe below. It is a variant of the technique mentioned in the rsync(1) man page under "Using rsync daemon features via a remote-shell connection":

It is sometimes useful to use various features of an rsync daemon (such as named modules) without actually allowing any new socket connections into a system (other than what is already required to allow remote-shell access). Rsync supports connecting to a host using a remote shell and then spawning a single-use "daemon" server that expects to read its config file in the home dir of the remote user.

The difference is only, we don't spawn a single-use rsyncd server-side but use a permanently running rsync server there that is only available to localhost connections. For the variant that spawns a single-use rsyncd and all further details, please see this Gist (archive.org version as a backup).
The instructions below restrict SSH access to the command nc localhost 873, that is, forwarding the connection to the local rsyncd server. In contrast to any approach without rsyncd, access management can be done with the powerful features of rsyncd, while SSH transport security protects the otherwise unencrypted rsyncd connection.

Configure /etc/rsyncd.conf to start rsync as a daemon, with access to files on the server that you want to expose, and with the daemon listening on the localhost interface only (use 127.0.0.1 rather than 0.0.0.0).

In /etc/rsyncd.conf you will also have to reference a secrets file. The secrets file should contain a line with the required username and password as a username:password pair. Also do a chmod 600 for your secrets file, otherwise, rsync will refuse to use it. For example:
chmod 600 /etc/rsync/rsyncd-backup.secrets

Create a normal SSH user username on your server.

Remove shell access from that new SSH user by adding a single SSH key with options to that user's .ssh/authorized_keys file:
# /home/username/.ssh/authorized_keys
command="/bin/nc localhost 873",no-port-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding ssh-rsa SSH_KEY_HERE

Explanation of the options:

command="/bin/nc localhost 873": force the command executed after login by that SSH user to be a netcat call to localhost port 873, basically forwarding the rsyncd connection via SSH.
no-port-forwarding: don't allow port forwarding.
no-agent-forwarding: don't allow agent forwarding
no-X11-forwarding: don't allow X11 forwarding

If you want to offer password based login rather than keys, you can adapt the instructions to use ForceCommand rather than the key options field in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys.

Connect from your local machine to the SSH server like this (using the so-called "rsync daemon notation" :: together with the --rsh=ssh option):
rsync -av --rsh=ssh username@remote_host::remote_dir local_dir/

Comment: The "follow these instructions" link is dead.
Comment: Fixed the broken link by taking over the content as good as I could from [this incomplete archive.org backup](https://web.archive.org/web/20230208163416/https://lxadm.com/secure-rsync-over-ssh-without-shell-access/). If it does not work as written, I added a link to a very similar recipe as well that has all the details.


MetaData Schema and MetaData Values

Question: Help me out..
I'm new to tridion. I want to know what is the purpose of creating metadata Schema and defining metadata values in the schema
Answer: What Sudhakar added in his comment is true. You can add metadata schema to most objects in Tridion, but the true question is why. Metadata is used to "tag" or "classify" content. What that means?
Well for example, you can tag your products with tags like "sport", "movies", "games" and then query with that criteria on content delivery side.
You can also add some information that can be used for other parts of the system, like some information regarding templating.
Comment: Indeed, classification of items is one use case. Many other use cases exist, though. Custom metadata is a very generic mechanism that can be used for all kinds of things; it completely depends on your implementation if and how you use it and what it means.
Comment: I agree. But for someone who is new to Tridion this is the easiest case to explain. :)
Answer: Users can use the Metadata Schema you created to add metadata values to Publications, Folders, Virtual Folders, Structure Groups, Pages, Categories, Keywords, Component Templates and Page Templates.
If the Metadata Schema was created in a BluePrint Parent Publication, the Metadata Schema is shared to all Child Publications.
Please read full article here

MetaData Schema and MetaData Values


Generate Parallel lines in Pixelmator

Question: I need to generate parallel lines with gap of 18px in Pixelmator for the purpose of baseline. Is there any quick way like transform in Illustrator or pattern in PS? Is it possible to generate guides such way?
Answer: with raster apps, I've always done it this way:

Draw first line
duplicated it and offset it the distance you want
now draw a selection around both lines and duplicate these lines
align one line from the original to the new one (you will now have 3 lines)
duplicate the 3 to make 5, the 5 to make 9, the 9 to make 17, etc.
Answer: If the lines are horizontal, vertical, or 45º diagonal, you can use the pen tool and press shift after the first point is placed.
Comment: I have to draw a set of lines (say 60) with equal distances apart.

Generate Parallel lines in Pixelmator


animate between pose/reset position in object data

Question: I made a deformation in reset position, and I can switch between pose and reset position using the buttons in Properties> Object Data> Skeleton. However, I can't find how to animate between pose/reset position.
Comment: You don't animate the rest pose.  It is an all zero "basis" bone structure. In pose mode `Pose > Clear Transform > All`  menu will return the rig to all zero pose (may  not be exactly rest pose depending on bone constraints)
Answer: Rest (not reset) position is the original position that your character is set to, prior to any poses being made. It shouldn't be changed once you've finished creating and rigging your character.
Pose position allows you to set different poses and save then in a Pose Library or record them as keyframes. You normally start with a starting pose and then save/record as you move it through a series of poses to create the movements you want the character to take over a number of frames.
Rest position doesn't play any part in your animation. The animation uses only the poses you save/record.
A simnple experiment is to create an initial pose, keyframe it to frame 1, then set your character to another pose and keyframe it to frame 20. Now press Alt-A to animate the character and watch what happens. Add more poses and keyframe them at various points along the timeline. This will familiarize you to the basic procedure and give you a better idea of how to use poses.
For info on using the Pose Library to save/use poses, consult the documents.


erc-721 erc-20 solidity code check effects interaction pattern

Question: Where can one locate a formally verified ERC20/ERC721 solidity code/template that adheres to security design patterns such as check effects interaction patterns?
Answer: Main problem with formally verifying ERC-20 implementations is that ERC-20 standard is informal by itself.  Different developers treat it very differently, and even mainstream interpretation changes over time, especially after infamous hacks.
For example, standard states, that Approval event

MUST trigger on any successful call to approve(address _spender, uint256 _value)

however some popular implementations also log this even on calls to transferFrom and other functions that may change allowance, such as burnFrom.
Another example is Transfer event that, according to standard:

MUST trigger when tokens are transferred, including zero value transfers.

The note about zero value transfer was added to the standard quite recently, so many old token contracts do not log this event on zero value transfers.
Also it is unclear whether Transfer event should be logged on non-zero value transfers from address to itself.
And there are many other ambiguous things in the standard.
Answer: Here is the relevant code in the 0xcert reference implementation:
/**
 * @dev Actually perform the safeTransferFrom.
 * @param _from The current owner of the NFT.
 * @param _to The new owner.
 * @param _tokenId The NFT to transfer.
 * @param _data Additional data with no specified format, sent in call to `_to`.
 */
function _safeTransferFrom(
  address _from,
  address _to,
  uint256 _tokenId,
  bytes _data
)
  internal
  canTransfer(_tokenId)
  validNFToken(_tokenId)
{
  address tokenOwner = idToOwner[_tokenId];
  require(tokenOwner == _from);
  require(_to != address(0));
    _transfer(_to, _tokenId);
    if (_to.isContract()) {
    bytes4 retval = ERC721TokenReceiver(_to).onERC721Received(msg.sender, _from, _tokenId, _data);
    require(retval == MAGIC_ON_ERC721_RECEIVED);
  }
}

Source: https://github.com/0xcert/ethereum-erc721/blob/master/contracts/tokens/NFToken.sol#L310-L337

This is not formally verified, to a rigorous definition of the word. Actually very few things are formally verified, please see the Vyper project if you are interested in that -- people interested in formality are using that language.
But informally, you can see that onERC721Received, the recursion step is applied at the tail of this function. That is the important part.
Here is the standard text -- https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-721 -- and it states:

When transfer is complete, this function checks if _to is a smart contract (code size > 0). If so, it calls onERC721Received on _to ...

Therefore this is a tail-end recursion, which follows the check effects interaction pattern.


Careers: response time and rate

Question: It would be nice if you could see a response time and rate from a company on careers, much like you see an accepted answer rate. The biggest things that stops me from from writing a covering letter and applying is my past experiences (on other job boards) where I've written a letter and sent it into a black hole.
Comment: I have never applied (or was contacted) via Careers (sadly), but wouldn't that only put pressure on companies to reply with a stock response as fast as possible, and then maybe coming back to the candidate?
Comment: I think it wouldn't 'only' do that, it would provide at least some confidence to the applicant. Also, you could rate the responses :)
Answer: In addition to the solid point made by @TimeTravelingBobby, not all employers respond through the Careers interface.  We email them your resume directly which probably includes some contact information for you.  Many companies enter this into some sort of applicant tracking system that can handle all of their hiring needs (not just developers) and then they contact the candidates through there.  Because of this, we couldn't possibly know the actual response rate.
Even if we could know the actual response rate, I would probably still be against this.  The job requirements and responsibilities are much more important tools for deciding where to apply than their response rate.  Even if some employer only responds to people that pass their resume scan, that percentage doesn't affect whether or not you will pass their screen, it's the content of your resume that matters.  So apply to the jobs you are qualified for (or almost qualified for) and that you think would be interesting to you.
On the flip side, I understand first hand the feeling of wanting to know where you stand on an application.  We cannot directly require employers to respond to applications through Careers, but I'd be open to any other ideas that address the issue.
Comment: Perhaps a conscientious employer wanting to increase their conversion rate could opt in?
Comment: I'm not sure what you mean by conversion rate or what it should be.  When you're hiring someone, you want the shortest path to filling your position with a well qualified person, which means a small number of applicants, any of whom should be hire worthy for the position.
Comment: Conversion rate = #number of applications ÷ # of views. If I were a hiring manager, and I could do something to increase the likelihood of  receiving applications (e.g. by providing a response guarantee) I would do choose to do it.

Careers: response time and rate


Conversion of Fortran 77 code to C++

Question: Has anyone converted a large (ours is 550,000 lines) program of Fortran 77 code to C++ ?  What pitfalls did you run into ?  Was the conversion a success ?  Did you use a tool like for_c ( http://www.cobalt-blue.com/fc/fcmain.htm ) ?  Was the resulting C++ code significantly faster or slower ?
Comment: You know the old joke: "rm *f is an automatic tool to convert all your fortran source into free disk blocks so you can start writing it right".
Comment: Why not re-engineer it?, It's clearly a big application so I think to take the advantage of C++ you're probably have to re-engineer it.
Comment: Please explain the statement "tied to an older F77 comoiler (open watcom f77 ..."; since fortran77 is a subset of fortran90, and 95 and 2003 (I believe only in 2008 will some features be deleted), so what's the problem with the compiler ? You can easily use new compilers, as long as you're using Standard fortran. Fortran is VERY backward compatible (I've compiler code from fortranII). And in case you're using some vendor extensions, then the convertion will help you not.
Comment: I would like to convert the code to C++ so that it will be easier to maintain using the same compiler (VC++) that we use for our 300,000 lines of user interface.  Right now we are tied to an older F77 comoiler (open watcom f77 and C/C++) and not very integrated.
Answer: This adds to EvilTeach's advice.  Keep in mind that it's fairly easy to link Fortran 77 and C/C++ code, so you can convert parts of your application incrementally and link them together with the old parts.  You'll have to think about all the usual fortran/c discrepancies (row/column-major arrays, array indexing, etc.) if you do this, but it would save you the pain of debugging your entire auto-translated codebase at once.
There are many large hybrid codes like this at the national (DOE) labs, which have a significant investment in old Fortran code.  If you go this route, you might consider using Babel, which was developed to allow components to be shared between C, C++, Fortran, Fortran90, Python and Java all in the same app.  The motivation for this at the labs is tying together physics models built by different teams for really large simulations, but you might find it useful for transitioning your code, too.  It's actively maintained and used on a lot of projects, though it might be a bit too complex for what you're trying to do.
Comment: Yes, incremental would be doable.  BTW, we already have 10,000 lines of C and C++ code in our app.  The F77 code is actually in a Win32 DLL that is callable by C, C++ or VB.
Answer: There are a lot of things to consider.
There are really two paths to take.  One is to do a direct line by line conversion to c.  By that I mean every fortran statement to an equalivant c statement.
The other path to take is a rewrite, and with 500k loc+ that would be much more work.
With that kind of size, I certainly would look for a tool, to do the translation, like f2c.
Issues for a straight port...
gotos translate directly, you will need to create labels for the goto targets.
label10:;

    goto label10;

Array subscripting is a potiential problem.
c is zero based, fortran is 1 based, so arrays need to be dimensioned one larger in the fortran code.
real*4 a(10,20) becomes
#define XMAX 10 + 1
#define YMAX 20 + 1
float a[XMAX][YMAX];

allowing the loop to be written like this.
for (x = 1; x <= XMAX; x++)
    for (y = 1; y <= YMAX; y++)
        a[x][y] = 0.0f;

c array access is in row major order, while fortran is column major.
that can be a performance problem.   if it does become a problem, you may be able
to solve it with some sort of macro definition which reverses the order or the array subscripts.  In fact you could also have the macro subtract one off of each of the subscripts in order to make it look like a one based array, actually map to a zero based array.
real*8 a(XMAX,YMAX)
a(4,2) = 3.14
#define A(X,Y)  a[Y][X]
double a[XMAX][YMAX];
A(4,2) = 3.14;

fortran unit io can be simulated with stdio type files.  if you are using unit 19, then
FILE *fp19 = fopen("file","mode");

There may be issues with carriage control if you are using fortran carriage control in your files.   Units 5 and 6 can be simply referenced with stdin, and stdout without fopen.
A lot of formats can be handled with the printf family of functions.  You may have to add additional loops to deal with some of the fortran array io.
WRITE(6, 200) (PROJ(z,4),z = 1, 20)
int z;
for (z = 1, z <= 20; z++)
    printf("%lf ", proj[z][4]);

 o using f2c is probably the fastest way to do it. Then you are stuck with its rtl.
 o doing a direct port is a feasable thing to do. Time consuming, but doable
 o if you want to maintain it long term, I would recommend a rewrite.  Very time consuming, probably faster, but more maintainable in the long run
Happily in any case you have the original program to use as a baseline to make a set of unit tests to help in the development effort.
Comment: Yes, I have been wondering about the array subscripting.  Actually not the single dimensioned arrays but the multiple dimensioned arrays worry me somewhat.  BTW, FOR_C has it's own RTL also that it substitutes for WRITE and READ.
Comment: f2c is a useful tool if you want to compile Fortran 77 and have a C compiler.  It's incredibly bad if you want to convert Fortran to C or C++ and do anything with the generated code other than compile it.
Answer: My reaction is why do you want to convert it.
The question of how to develop a product with a large Fortran code base was looked at by numerous companies in the 1990's. That is whether to convert, stay with Fortran or produce a hybrid. I think the majority opted for the hybrid approach, usually C++ for the user interface and the original Fortran code base in the background.
My suggestion is to look at "Mixed language programming using C++ and FORTRAN 77"  by Carsten Arnholm available at http://arnholm.org/software/cppf77/cppf77.htm In the earlier days of the internet this document was well linked to.
This document describes how to have an application that contains C++ and Fortran. I cannot say whether some of the technical details may be outdated but this document came out of a project that wanted to using C++ for its development but had a huge Fortran code base.
You could also look at "Scientific and Engineering C++: An Introduction with Advanced Techniques and Examples" by Barton and Nackman, available from good book stores.
This book teaches C++ for Fortran programmers. It has a few examples of writing wrappers to Fortran code from C++. It is a good C++ book ignoring the Fortran aspect. It was written before the standard was set but the differences are not very big.
Comment: At our company, we have found that Fortran programmers are becoming hard to find.
Answer: I once used this: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man1/f2c.html to convert a small fortran program to C. The conversion was successful. The code wasn't significantly complex to detect any kind of speed change.
Since your program is allot bigger I don't really know if everything is going to run like it did with me.
Comment: I used f2c on a moderate size fortran code several years back.  The already poor quality (readability terms) fortran code dropped to horrendous after going through the translation.  It took a lot of manual effort to polish to readable C.
Answer: You might want to look into Promula. It produces more readable C code than many other automatic translators.  I haven't used Promula directly, but I've converted a fair amount of Promula output from C to C++.  It's easy to clean up the C code to legal C++, but of course it takes more effort to make it really good C++.
Answer: I've worked on a application that, at its heart, was code converted from FORTRAN using for_c . The code it created was god awful. It was very difficult to maintain since most of it was indecipherable. Luckily that code was pretty stable and it was rare that anything had to be done to it.
However, this was done many years ago - circa the early 16-bit years of Windows. Maybe for_c is better now?

Conversion of Fortran 77 code to C++


Join attributes by location won't sum values in QGIS

Question: I am trying to average all the data for one attribute in a particular census tract from the road segments data that lies inside of them.  The documentation states that you can sum average etc. data by using join attributes by location.  When I go into this feature it does not give me any option to choose sum or average the data.  I select the attribute column I want to pass to the polygon layer to I can select the column I want to move to the layer, but not do any calculations.  When I choose PM2 it just gives me a column in the new polygon layer labeled PM2 with null values.  What am I missing?
Answer: You would have to use the tool Join attributes by location (summary).
Feel free to look at this tutorial
Comment: Thanks!  I am not super familiar with QGIS and never keep the processing toolbox turned-on- and have only a fraction of the capabilities in the menus.  Have to remember this  Cheers!
Comment: That tool also does not sum. It can find min, max median but sum has some problem, it does not produce SUM column, even if there are more than one intersecting features, which min max can separate.
Comment: A correction to my comment: min() max() summaries can calculate on even string fields it seems. After I created a new field with to_int(), I was able to calculate sum and mean. So we need to be cognizant of the field type.
Comment: @GürayHatipoğlu I don't know what the mean or sum of a text can possibly be. For min/max, don't forget that text comparison is done (can be done) character by character, so `2 > 10000` and ' 1 < 20000'. Also text comparison is locale dependent. ==> always use the proper field type if you want to do math.


Building lines on ceiling/drywall expansion

Question: From what I've read on other posts, this is pretty common. We moved into this home less than 1 yr ago and we've been noticing these lines more and more in the ceiling especially this summer. Is there a way we can fix this so it doesn't happen anymore?
The house was built around 1960 and when we moved in the home was remodeled. This has been the only thing that has been causing concern for me and I was curious if there was a way to fix it.
Comment: @Gil, sounds like an answer more than a comment...
Answer: That appears to be where the joint was drywall taped and filled with drywall joint compound. Moisture or movement could cause this to happen. Is the home air conditioned. To repair it you need to clean out the original joint, tape it and fill with drywall joint compound and sand it smooth. This is a very messy process. I went through that many years ago, there may be better methods today, but if so I am not familiar with them. This link to SFGate will take you through it step by step.
Answer: That issue is cosmetic not structural.
It was either a bad tape job or moisture/humidity are affecting the joints in your ceiling's drywall.
The main reason it's so noticeable is because of the adjacent ceiling lights. If the light source was a floor lamp or mirror vanity lights then it would be less noticeable.
Unless you can guarantee perfect humidity conditions then fixing it will be costly (if subcontracted), lengthy (if DIY), messy, and ultimately futile because those lines will return.
Comment: Are they truly destined to return? Seems to me that if that was the case, joint lines would be visible in many, many more houses. (I do realize that a lot do have these and people don't care and/or live with it.)


Conditions for the M-estimator to converge to the true mean

Question: Given i.i.d. samples from a gaussian distribution $X_1,...,X_n \sim N(\mu,\sigma) $ and the M-estimator, $\mu_m = \underset{a}{\operatorname{argmin}}  \sum\rho(|X_i-a|)$, what properties on $\rho$ are sufficient to guarantee $\mu_m \rightarrow \mu$ in probability? Is $\rho$ being strictly convex and strictly increasing sufficient?
Comment: Since you may take $\rho(x) = x$ and then $\mu_m$ is the sample mean, that means it could be even not strictly convex, but strictly increasing yes, thus... I would put either strictly convex or strictly increasing, both seems to be sufficient, though have still to prove this. Intuitively strict convexity ensures unique global minimum, for strictly increasing it's the gaussianity assumption that matters.
Answer: The paper Asymptotics for minimisers of convex processes by Hjort and Pollard may help here, although it does not specialize to Gaussian distributions, and it considers a more general form of contrast function, namely $\rho(x,a)$, though their notation is $g(y,t)$. In addition to convexity of $g$ in $t$, they require an expansion of $g$ in $t$ around $\theta_0$, in a certain sense that's related to the data distribution.  So, not as simple as just saying $\rho$ is convex or increasing, but perhaps if you restrict the theorem to Gaussian distributions and $g$ to have the form you specify, you can get an even neater set of conditions.  I'll rewrite their theorem here for completeness, slightly paraphrased:
Suppose we have

$Y,Y_{1},Y_{2},\ldots$ i.i.d. from distribution $F$
Parameter of interest $\theta_{0}=\theta(F)\in\cal{R}^{p}$
$\theta_{0}\in\arg\min_{t\in\cal{R}^{p}}\mathbb{E} g(Y,t)$,
where $g(y,t)$ is convex in $t$.
We have a "weak expansion" of $g(y,t)$ in $t$ around $\theta_{0}$:
$$
g(y,\theta_{0}+t)-g(y,\theta_{0})=D(y)^{T}t+R(y,t),
$$
for a $D(y)$ with mean zero under $F$ and
$$
\mathbb{E} R(Y,t)=\frac{1}{2}t^{T}Jt+o(\left|t\right|^{2}),\mbox{ as }t\to0
$$
for a positive definite matrix $J$.
$\mbox{Var}[ R(Y,t) ]=o(\left|t\right|^{2})$  as $t\to0$.
$D(Y)$ has a finite covariance matrix $K=\int D(y)D(y)^{T}\, dF(y)$.

THEN any estimator $\hat{\theta}_{n}\in\arg\min_{\theta\in\cal{R}^{p}}\sum_{i=1}^{n}g(Y_{i},t)$
is $\sqrt{n}$-consistent for $\theta_{0}$, and asymptotically normal with
$$
\sqrt{n}\left(\hat{\theta}_{n}-\theta_{0}\right)\stackrel{d}{\rightarrow}\mathcal{N}_{p}(0,J^{-1} K J^{-1}).
$$
Answer: This will not be an answer, since it will reduce your problem to another one, but I think it might be useful. Your question is basically about consistency of M-estimator. So first we can look at the general results. Here is the result from van der Vaart book (theorem 5.7, page 45):
Theorem Let $M_n$ be random functions and let $M$ be a fixed function of $\theta$ such that for every $\varepsilon>0$
$$\sup_{\theta\in\Theta}|M_n(\theta)-M(\theta)|\xrightarrow{P}0,$$
$$\sup_{\theta:d(\theta,\theta_0)\ge\varepsilon} M(\theta)<M(\theta_0).$$
Then any sequence of estimators $\hat\theta_n$ with $M_n(\hat\theta_n)\ge M_n(\theta_0)-o_P(1)$ converges in probability to $\theta_0$
In your case $\theta_0=\mu$, $M(\theta)=E\rho(|X-\theta|)$ and $M_n(\theta)=\frac{1}{n}\sum \rho(|X_i-\theta|)$
The key condition here is the uniform convergence. In page 46 van der Vaart says

that for averages which is your case this condition is equivalent
to set of functions $\{m_\theta, \theta\in\Theta\}$
($m_\theta=\rho(|x-\theta|)$ in your case) being
Glivenko-Canteli. One simple set of sufficient conditions is that $\Theta$ be
compact, that the functions $\theta\to m_\theta(x)$ are continuous for every $x$, and that > they are dominated by an integrable function.

In Wooldridge this result is formulated as theorem called Uniform Weak Law of Large Numbers, page 347 (first edition), theorem 12.1. It only adds measurability requirements to what van der Vaart states.
In your case you can safely pick $\Theta=[\mu-C,\mu+C]$ for some $C$, so you need to show that there exists function $b$ such that
$$|\rho(|x-\theta|)|\le b(x)$$
for all $\theta\in\Theta$, such that $Eb(X)<\infty$. Convex function theory might be of help here, since you basicaly can take
$$b(x)=\sup_{\theta\in\Theta}|\rho(|x-\theta|)|.$$
If this function has nice properties then you are good to go.


Is it possible to skip the nursery?

Question: If I know a certain value is likely to survive its first encounter with the garbage collector, is there some way to let GHC know, so it can just allocate it directly somewhere outside the nursery? For instance, if I'm building up a large structure out of a bunch of smaller pieces, I know each piece will last at least until the whole structure is complete.
Comment: This optimization is called "[pretenuring](http://www.memorymanagement.org/glossary/p.html#term-premature-tenuring)" - there's been some research into it, but I don't believe that it's been incorporated into any mainstream compiler / runtime.
Comment: @Cirdec The problem is that the definition I linked to describes pretenuring as a being a problem (short-lived objects being promoted too soon), not as an optimization (long-lived objects being promoted early).  [This](http://people.cs.umass.edu/~moss/papers/oopsla-2001-pretenure.pdf) is a paper that describes it as being an optimization, also [this paper](http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/speedway/DaCapo/papers/toplas-pretenure.pdf), however the memorymanagement.org link is the only definition I could find that wasn't embedded in a paper
Comment: @Zim-ZamO'Pootertoot I believe "premature tenuring" (what you linked to) describes the opposite, a mechanism of preventing short-lived objects from leaving the nursery when they first encounter the GC by avoiding any encounter with the GC. This question is asking for a mechanism for long-lived objects to start promoted so that the first encounter with the GC doesn't need to promote them.
Comment: As a little meta-comment: I hate this sort of question, because you always think, "No, there's no way." but the immediate thought after that is, "Well, I'm sure I don't know *everything* about the compiler (maybe only one or two people do), and since it's open source of course there's a way to do anything computable, but... that's not really an answer...". Does anybody have constructive ways to answer this kind of question?
Comment: @DanielWagner, aside from any features I might have missed, I wondered if there might be some tricky way to exploit GHC's mechanisms for dealing with large and/or foreign objects. I couldn't immediately see such a thing, but I'm *really* not familiar with those systems.
Answer: In the GHC garbage collector there are no hooks for hinting at the generation an object should be allocated to. However, you might be able to exploit the operational behavior in a couple of ways:

depending on the data type, you may be able to exploit the pinned object region to bypass the generational stages altogether.
exploit eager promotion by ensuring your long lived object is pointed out by something itself long lived...
make the data into a CAF and bypass dynamic allocation altogether.
Comment: Unfortunately, what I'm doing is too polymorphic to use pinning, and making the data into a CAF isn't generally an option. If you edit your answer to explain a little more how I might trick eager promotion, I'll happily accept this answer. Note: my current use-case is reducing the GC time for `Data.Sequence.fromList`, which is somewhat absurdly high.

Is it possible to skip the nursery?


How to pay bitcoin via webmoney?

Question: I have some Bitcoin on my Webmoney Bitcoin purse (called " WMX "), so I want to pay for some service, for example to my "namecheap.com" account, how should i do it? after checkout it redirects me to bitpay.com then I think I should copy the address they provide and what I do next?
Comment: Then it would be nice if you answered your own question, so that other people that find it can benefit from your effort.
Comment: Have you tried looking at your Webmoney Bitcoin purse's FAQ, for "how to send money"?
Comment: I finally did it with many complications.
Answer: First you should go to site you want to buy something then go to the menu where you can deposit bitcoin, it redirected me to some bitpay.com page with a qr code, so I copied the address besides the qrcode, and went to webmoney's WMX purse and pressed spend (or send bitcoin) and it successfully been sent, but bitpay didn't recognized the payment so after few days I got the transaction from webmoney and blockchain (supposedly the site they use for bitcoin transferring) and sent it to the purchase site support and asked them for help after few days they added it to my account.
Answer: You need to copy that address and now next you can login to your bitcoin wallet and its its via webmoney then use that. And send exact amount written on Namecheap checkout page and send. Payment will be automatically processed.

How to pay bitcoin via webmoney?


Whose mother's name was known first?

Question: What was the first instance for both Superman and Batman of the reader learning the name of their human mother? I am looking for a rough idea of real life time (year) as well as issue number.
Comment: I have also answered the question, but I don't know which answer is more correct.
Comment: Superman's mother's name was Lara, not Martha.
Comment: @Baby Yoda  That is a matter of opinion, and your opinion is certainly about as good as the other one, which is why my answer states when Lara was first named in a comic book.
Comment: I have edited the question to specify I was looking for the name of the Human Mother.
Answer: From The Origin of Batman it appears the first proper mention of Martha Wayne was in Batman Vol 1 #47 June 1948 Within that site is a link to a Detective Comics Vol 1 #33 1939 which has the annotation of "Dies in flashback Not yet named".
From Jonathan and Martha Kent it appears that the adoptive parents names has changed during the early period of Superman and only becoming consistent/canonized later:

Pa Kent is first named Jonathan in Adventure Comics v1 #149 (Feb 1950). Ma Kent is first named Marthe in Superboy v1 #12 (Jan-Feb 1951) and Martha in subsequent appearances. Her full name is given as Martha Hudson Clark Kent in answer to a letter writer's query in Superman v1 #148 (Oct 1961).
Later stories, after the early 1960s introduction of DC's Multiverse system, declare that the early version of the Kents are named "John and Mary Kent" and live on the world of "Earth-Two", home of the Golden Age DC superheroes, while the more modern Jonathan and Martha Kent live on the world of "Earth-One", home of the Silver Age DC superheroes.

So Batman's mother seems to have the earliest of the commonly known names known to readers. Although "Mary Kent" was introduced in Superman #1 1939.
Comment: The wording of your conclusion is a little confusing, "earliest naming known to readers"... how is Batman's mother being named in the 40s and 50s "earliest" when "Mary Kent" was published June 1939?
Comment: @manofsteelanswers.com Made a slight edit as "Martha Kent" has been used in the Superman movies and TV series, however the naming history is quoted above for clarity. Writing about retcon name change where the original naming is folded back in the multiverse can get confusing. OP was looking for timeframe and issue numbers regardless.
Comment: I understand you're trying to say Batman canonized "Martha" earlier than Superman, I just don't know WHY since OP is asking explicitly for the JUST the first... not the first "known TODAY" or first consistent name; OP literally asks, "First instance ... of reader learning", I don't know how that question gets contorted to "Batman was first."  It's like reversing the answer and footnote.  The answer is Superman #1 June '39 is FIRST per the question.  The footnote is "BUT Batman if looking for the first CONSISTENT name (which you didn't ask for)." - I accept the content, just a curious reply.
Answer: I add to Morrison Chang's answer the suggestion that possibly Superman's Kryptonian biological mother Lara was named first.
According to Wikipedia:

Lara first appeared in the Superman newspaper comic strip in 1939, where she was first named "Lora." Her first comic book appearance (after being mentioned in the 1942 text novel The Adventures of Superman by George Lowther, where she was named "Lara" for the first time) was in More Fun Comics #101 in January–February 1945. A 1948 retelling of Superman's origin story[6] subsequently delved into detail about Lara, though her more familiar Silver Age aspects became more firmly established starting in the late 1950s and over the course of the next several decades.

enter link description here
So it seems that Superman's biological mother on Krypton was given a name as early as 1939 and had her present name of Lara in comic books as early as More Fun Comics #101 in January–February 1945, about 6 years before his adoptive human mother on Earth was named Martha in Superboy v1 #12 (Jan-Feb 1951), and about 3 years before Batman's mother Martha Wayne was named in Batman Vol 1 #47 June 1948.

Whose mother's name was known first?